PRESENTED    BY 


PROBLEMS    OF    POWER 


"  Peut-*tre,  et  je  me  sens  un  violent  penchant  a  le  croire, 
les  hommes  ne  sont-ils  que  des  aveugles  qui  voyagent  au 
milieu  des  tenebres,  et  dont  quelques-uns  ouvrent  inutile- 
ment  les  yeux  pour  distinguer  les  ombres  qui  les  environnent 
et  au  sein  desquelles  ils  sont  forces  de  cheminer  a  tatons." 

FOSCOLO  :  Jacopo  Ortis  (French  Translation 
Paris,  1829,  p.  115) 


PROBLEMS 
OF  POWER 

BY 

W.     MORTON     FULLERTON 

AUTHOR  OF  "IN  CAIRO,"  "PATRIOTISM  AND 
SCIENCE"  AND  "TERRES  FRANCAISES" 
(SOMETIME  CORRESPONDENT  OF  THE  TIMES} 


NEW  AND 
REVISED 
EDITION 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 
1914 


First  Puilished,  April.  1913 
Second  Impression,  September,  1913 
Second  Edition  Revised,  September,  1914 


Annex 


T> 


C"" 


"  Cum  igitur  animum  ad  Politicam  applicverim,  nihii  quod 
novum,  vel  inauditum  est ;  sed  tantum  ea,  quae  cum  praxi  ojjtime 
conveniunt,  certd,  et  indubitatd  ratione  demonstrare,  aut  ex  ipsa 
humanae  naturae  conditione  deducere,  intendi ;  et  ut  ea,  quae  ad 
hanc  scientiam  spectant,  eddem  animi  libertate,  qud  res  Mathe- 
matical solemus,  inquirerem,  sedulo  curavi,  humanas  actiones  non 
ridere,  non  lugere,  neque  detestari ;  sed  intettigere  :  atque  adeo 
humanos  affectus,  ut  aunt  amor,  odium,  ira,  invidia,  gloria,  miseri- 
cordia,  et  reliquae  animi  commotiones,  non  ut  humanae  naturae 
vitia  ;  sed  ut  proprietates  contemplatus  sum,  quae  ad  ipsam  ita 
pertinent,  ut  ad  naturam  aeris  aestits,  frigus,  tempestas,  tonitru, 
et  alia  hujusmodi,  quae,  tametsi  incommoda  sunt,  necessaria  tamen 
sunt  certasque  habent  causas,  per  quas  eorum  naturam  intelligere 
conamur,  et  Mens  eorum  verd  contemplatione  aeque  gaudet,  ac 
earum  rerum  cognitione,  quae  sensibus  gratae  aunt." 

SPINOZA:  Tractatus  Politicus,  capvl  I.  §  4. 


NOTE  TO  THE  REVISED  EDITION 

f  MHE  first  edition  of  "Problems  of  Power"  was  pub- 
1  lished  in  the  springtime  of  1913.  A  few  weeks 
later  Bulgaria,  treacherously  abandoning  her  allies  of 
the  Balkan  Confederation,  precipitated  a  second  war, 
with  the  object  of  depriving  Servia  and  Greece  of  the 
fruits  of  their  victories.  An  opportune  intervention 
of  Rumania,  and  the  valour  of  the  Greeks  and  the 
Servians,  thwarted  the  plan  of  the  Bulgarian  Tsar. 
Austria-Hungary  and  Germany  had  counted  on  the 
success  of  Bulgaria.  When  they  scanned  the  South- 
Eastern  horizon,  after  the  Inter-Balkan  War,  they 
found  the  road  to  Salonica  definitively  closed ;  they 
perceived  that  the  problem  of  the  future  of  the  Southern 
Slavs  had  suddenly  become  almost  an  urgent  present 
problem ;  and  they  beheld  with  dismay  that  a  whole 
series  of  perplexing  new  factors,  unfavourable  to  some 
of  their  most  essential  policies,  had  suddenly  risen  to 
trouble  the  nights  of  their  statesmen.  When  the  new 
conditions  of  Balkan  stability  were  finally  fixed,  and 
when  the  fate  of  the  Triple  Alliance  was  sealed  by  the 
Treaty  of  Bucharest,  Europe,  which  during  this  period 
had  been  more  than  once  on  the  verge  of  war,  breathed 
more  easily.  At  the  summons  of  Germany  it  again 
turned  its  attention  to  "international  business."  It 
tackled  and  solved  a  long  list,  of  Middle -Eastern  ques- 


viii        NOTE  TO  THE  REVISED  EDITION 

tions ;  in  France  and  England,  the  while,  the  politicians 
and  the  Parliaments  pursued  their  partisan  and  often 
corrosive  anti-national  ends,  indifferent  to  the  state  of 
Europe. 

These  events  of  1913  to  1914  were  great  events,  and 
some  of  them  submitted  "Problems  of  Power"  to  an 
unexpected  test.  The  author's  object  had  been  to 
synthesize  the  social,  political,  and  economic  facts  of 
world-history  from  Sadowa  to  Kirk-Kilisse.  His  aim 
was  primarily  to  put  these  facts  in  their  proper  perspec- 
tive, and  thereby  to  formulate  the  logic  of  their  drift. 
Indirectly  he  hoped  slightly  to  serve  a  less  disinterested 
end.  He  dreamed — without  cherishing,  however,  any 
excessive  illusions — of  preparing  public  opinion  in  the 
apathetic  British  and  American  worlds  for  that  European 
War  which,  as  almost  every  page  of  "  Problems  of 
Power  "  indicates,  he  descried  on  the  horizon ;  and  the 
breaking  out,  in  August  1914,  of  just  such  a  war  as  he 
had  anticipated  was  not  in  any  sense,  therefore,  another 
"test"  of  "Problems  of  Power,"  but,  as  every  reader  of 
the  first  edition  of  that  book  is  aware,  the  melancholy 
confirmation  of  an  Essay  which  had  been  the  solemn 
precursor  of  that  inevitable  cataclysm. 

This  new  edition  represents  the  author's  vision  of  the 
state  of  Europe  and  the  World  on  the  eve  of  the  Great 
War  of  1914.  '•  Problems  of  Power,"  as  it  is  now  again 
presented  to  the  public,  makes  the  claim  of  being  as 
convenient  a  prolegomenon  as  can  now  be  had  to  the 
history  of  a  vanished  epoch,  the  troubled  half-century 
just  preceding  the  era  inaugurated  in  September  1914 
by  the  victories  of  the  Franco-British  troops  in  the 
battlefields  of  the  Marne.  In  a  subsequent  book  the 
author  proposes  to  enter  more  minutely  into  the  origins 
of  the  war  of  1914,  and  to  discuss,  with  some  detail,  the 


NOTE  TO  THE  REVISED  EDITION          ix 

larger,  more  impressive  consequences  of  the  war.  Mean- 
while, the  present  volume — which  may,  perhaps,  have 
the  good  fortune  to  be  reprinted,  but  which  can  no 
longer  be  revised — must  stand  or  fall  essentially  in  its 
present  form.  Since  the  gates  of  the  Temple  of  Janus 
are  once  again  thrown  wide,  this  book — which  is  the 
record  of  a  past  that  is  "  closed,"  and  which  was  the 
messenger  of  a  future  of  which  we  are  already  the  heirs 
— the  author  piously  lays  on  the  altar  of  the  double- 
faced  divinity  who  presides  over  the  parting  of  the 
ways,  glad  to  have  been  able  to  bear  witness,  at  so 
interesting  a  moment  of  history,  to  the  truth  that 
Present,  Past,  and  Future  are  only  three  moods  of  one 
and  the  same  active  Verb. 


Owing  to  the  state  of  war  in  France,  the  author  was 
prevented  from  himself  supervising  the  printing  of  this 
new  edition.  The  tedious  and  delicate  task  of  reading 
the  proofs  and  of  passing  them  for  the  press  has  been 
undertaken  by  Mr.  Edward  Hutton.  The  author 
hereby  expresses  to  Mr.  Hutton  his  sincere  thanks. 

PARIS, 

September  18,  1914. 


INTRODUCTION 

"  TTTHEN  Gk>d  wipes  out,"  says    Bossuet,   "  he  is 
YV     getting  ready  to  write."     "  Quand  Dieu  efface 
c'est  qu'il  se  prepare  a  ecrire." 

During  the  last  ten  years  the  Eternal  would  seem  to 
have  been  preparing  what  one  of  his  vicegerents,  the  Ger- 
man Chancellor,  recently  called  "  the  policy  of  the  clean 
slate."  Not  even  Bossuet  would  venture  to  divine  the 
sense  of  the  still-hidden  writing  on  the  wall.  Modern 
Europe  is  working  out  its  destiny  in  blind  obedience  to  the 
will  of  its  two  demiurgic  creators,  Napoleon  and  Bis- 
marck. But  neither  the  one  nor  the  other  saw  ten  years 
ahead.  When  Napoleon,  at  Tilsitt,  in  conversation  with 
the  Tsar  Alexander  and  the  King  of  Prussia,  said  to  the 
latter,  on  his  complaining  of  the  humiliating  conditions 
of  peace  imposed  by  the  great  Emperor,  "It  is  part  of 
my  system  to  weaken  Prussia;  I  mean  that  she  shall  no 
longer  be  a  power  in  the  political  balance  of  Europe,"1  he 
magnificently  formulated  a  policy  which  might  have 
become  the  principle  of  action  of  successive  French  states- 
men; but  he  could  not  guess  that  within  seven  years  Stein 
and  Hardenberg,  Fichte,  Schiller  and  Schleiermacher 
would  have  inflamed  the  soul  of  a  regenerated  Prussia, 

1  "  II  est  dans  mon  systeme  d'affaiblir  la  Prusse;  je  veux  qu'eile 
ne  soit  plus  une  puissance  dans  la  balance  politique  de  1'Europe." 
Quoted  from  the  "  Report  of  the  Princess  Louise  on  the  interview  of 
Tilsitt,"  addressed  to  her  husband  when  he  was  on  a  mission  to  Vienna. 
SeeQuarante-CinqAnneesdeMa  Vie:  1770-1815,  by  PrmccrsP.r.e'ziwin. 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

and  that  that  Prussia  would  be  at  the  head  of  the  coalition 
to  which  he  himself  was  to  succumb  at  Waterloo.  Nor 
could  the  same  Napoleon  who  prophesied,  "  Within  a 
hundred  years  Europe  will  be  Republican  or  Cossack," 
foresee  Bismarck,  Sadowa  and  Sedan.  Bismarck,  who 
presided  at  Versailles  over  the  conferences  that  resulted 
in  the  dismemberment  of  France,  failed  to  perceive  the 
logical  consequence  of  his  own  vast  designs,  a  Franco- 
Russian  Alliance  and  a  Triple  Entente  resolutely  directed 
towards  giving  a  more  reasonable  modern  form  to  the 
perspicacious  provisions  embodied  by  Napoleon  in  the 
Treaty  of  Tilsitt.  Nor  did  the  same  Bismarck,  who  said 
to  Lord  Salisbury  in  1876  that  the  Eastern  question  was 
"  not  worth  the  bones  of  a  Pomeranian  grenadier,"  reflect 
that,  by  driving  Austria-Hungary  eastward  down  the 
Danube  and  towards  the  Balkans,  in  order  to  bring  her 
face  to  face  with  the  Cossack,  he  prepared  the  movement 
of  Pan-Slavism  which  was  soon  to  result  in  the  Russo- 
Turkish  war  of  1877;  rendered  inevitable  in  1878  the 
Congress  of  Berlin,  whence  Russia  was  to  come  forth 
humiliated,  and  the  potential  friend  of  Germany's  mortal 
enemy;  and  created  those  new  nationalities,  the  alliance 
of  which  a  generation  later  was  to  stultify  the  efforts  of 
the  Powers  to  maintain  the  integrity  of  the  Ottoman 
Empire,  and  to  establish  on  the  ruins  of  European  Turkey 
a  United  States  of  Balkany.1 

1  On  March  28, 1903,  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  Bulgarian  revolutionary 
committees  for  the  organization  of  Macedonian  autonomy,  the  orator 
and  poet  Mikhailowsky,  told  M.  Maurice  Kahn  (vide  Courriers  de 
Macedolne,  Cahiers  de  la  Quinzaine,  August  1903),  that  the  only  way 
for  the  Balkan  States  to  avoid  failing  under  German  protection  was 
to  form  a  Balkan  federation.  The  Servians,  Bulgarians,  Rumanians, 
and  Greeks,  he  said,  were  less  different  than  Bretons,  Burgundians  and 
Gascons.  Dread  of  the  foreigner  had  forced  union  on  the  Gallic  tribes. 
The  German  peril  would  impose  union  on  the  Slav  peoples.  Six  years 
ater  the  Bulgarian  poet's  dream  came  true. 


INTRODUCTION 

"  Prevision  of  the  past,"  to  use  an  ingenious  phrase  of 
M.  Clemenceau,  is  not  altogether  beyond  the  powers  of 
the  human  intelligence.  Plotting  the  curve  of  the  future 
is  quite  another  matter.  It  is  certain,  moreover,  that 
neither  any  approximately  accurate  forecast  of  the  future, 
however  immediate,  nor  yet  any  satisfactory  compre- 
hension of  the  present,  is  possible  without  careful  scrutiny 
of  the  past.  Present,  Past  and  Future  are  merely  three 
moods  of  one  and  the  same  active  Verb.  Their  reciprocal 
relations  are  organic.  The  observer  who  surveys  the 
latest  forty  years  of  history  from  the  quaking  vantage 
point  of  his  own  moment  of  time  inevitably  discovers 
that,  although  what  are  called  "  events  "  seem  to  hang  so 
neatly  together  that  they  might  be  strung,  like  beads,  on 
chains  of  general  laws,  this  impression  is  an  illusion,  and 
that  no  philosophy  of  history  is  possible.  But  he  per- 
ceives, at  the  same  time,  that  there  is  an  art  of  history, 
and  that  this  art  consists  in  representing,  in  any  given 
field,  Actions  in  their  right  perspective.  History  treated 
as  an  art  becomes  less  a  record  of  the  vicissitudes  of  arti- 
ficially isolated  States,  less  a  eulogy  of  heroes,  less  a  matter 
of  edification,  than  a  kind  of  telescopic  penetration  and 
foreshortening  of  the  human  nebulae,  those  agglomerations 
composed  of  bustling  molecules,  whose  infinitely  complex 
movements  are  determined  by  the  size,  the  weight,  and 
the  individual  drift  of  their  myriad  fellows. 


TABLE   OF   CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION 

PAOE 

HISTORY  AN  ART        ........  xi 

Napoleon  and  Bismarck,  the  Creators  of  Modern  Europe — Their 
inability  to  foresee  the  future — "  Prevision  of  the  past  " — No  philo- 
sophy of  history  possible — An  art  of  history  possible — History  as  an 
art,  the  representation  of  actions  in  their  right  perspective. 

FIRST  BOOK 

World  History  from  Sedan  to  the  Coup  d'Agadir. 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  Two  FORCES  DETERMINING  THE  DESTINY  OF  THE  WORLD    .        3 

CHAPTER  II 

ECONOMIC  INTERESTS  AND  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OP  STATES         .        3 
Illustrations  of  the  fact  that  money  is  the  key  of  history. 

CHAPTER  III 
PUBLIC  OPINION  AND  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  SOCIETY    »        .        .        6 

CHAPTER  IV 
ECONOMIC  CONDITIONS  AND  MODERN  POLITICAL  EVOLUTION     .        7 

Internationalization  of  the  human  consciousness  and  of  social 
problems — Political  aspect  of  the  World — Situation  described  by 
Count  Berchtold — Significance  of  "  insurance  "  treaties — Subordin- 
ation of  national,  to  general,  interests,  shown  by  the  results  of  the 
temporary  closing  of  the  Dardanelles — The  duel  between  national 
patriotism  and  European,  or  world,  patriotism — Real  nature  of  the 
modern  outburst  of  nationalism — National  spirit  manifested  only 
when  nationality  is  menaced. 

xv 


xvi  CONTENTS 

MM 

CHAPTER  V 

THE  SUBVIVAL  OF  MODERN  STATES  IN  SPITE  OF  THE  CORROSIVE 

ACTION  OF  ECONOMIC  FACTS 13 

CHAPTER  VI 
THE  CASE  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 14 

Effect  of  the  expansion  o*  American  trade  on  American  curiosity 
as  to  international  conditions — The  two  cardinal  American  policies : 
the  "  Monroe  Doctrine  "  and  the  "  Open  Door  " — The  America  of 
twenty  years  ago  and  the  America  of  to-day — The  "  sky-scraper  " 
and  American  idealism — Steady  advance  in  political  and  social 
unification — Awakening  of  a  national  spirit — American  individual- 
ism doomed — A  new  sense  of  joint  responsibility — Comparison 
between  the  passion  for  sport  in  America  and  that  of  the  ancient 
Greeks — New  conception  of  play — An  American  eleventh  command- 
ment— Effect  of  sport  on  the  human  type  in  America — Survival  of 
the  old  religious  ideals  as  "  forms  of  thought "  accounting  for 
American  idealism  and  optimism — General  ignorance  of  the  United 
States  in  Europe — European  recognition  of  America  as  a  world- 
power  due  to  career  of  Mr.  Roosevelt — Mr.  Roosevelt's  visit  to 
Europe  in  1909 — His  visit  to  France  especially  significant — Justifi- 
cation of  this  statement  by  analysis  of  French  state  of  mind  as 
regards  the  Franco-Russian  Alliance — The  appeal  of  the  Tsar  in 
1898,  in  favour  of  disarmament — French  disappointment  when  the 
nation  realized  that  the  Franco-Russian  forces  were  the  "  Army  of 
the  Hague  " — Ambiguous  consequences  of  Franco -Russian  Alli- 
ance :  pacifism  or  war  ? — Apparent  solution  offered  by  rough-rider  of 
Cuba,  who  had  also  been  the  laureate  of  the  Nobel  Peace  Prize — 
Anxious  curiosity  in  France  as  to  Mr.  Roosevelt's  "  Message  " — 
Impressiveness  for  Frenchmen  of  a  President  of  the  American  type 
— The  Consular  character  of  Republican  Government  in  the  United 
States  illustrated  by  Mr.  Roosevelt's  policy  in  San  Domingo  and  at 
Panama — Possible  risks  of  Presidential  independence  for  popular 
liberty — Comparison  of  the  constitntional  rOJe  of  the  German  Em- 
peror— No  analogy  between  "  republican  "  government  in  France 
and  hi  the  United  States — Analysis  of  the  French  Constitution  of 
1875  as  regards  the  part  played  by  the  head  of  the  state — Signs  of 
prevailing  desire  in  France  for  reform  of  the  Constitution. 

CHAPTER  VH 

THE  CASE  OF  EUROPE:  THE  SEQUENCE  OF  EUROPEAN  EVENTS 

SINCE  THE  FRANCO-GERMAN  WAR 50 

The  plans  of  Bismarck,  and  the  struggle  in  Europe  for  the  bal- 
ance of  power — The  Treaty  of  Berlin — Colonial  expansion  of  France 
and  its  European  consequences — Fall  of  Bismarck — Attitude  of 
William  II — The  German  Emperor  and  the  Tsar — Proposed  Franco- 
Germano-Russian  Alliance — German  overtures  to  France — Russian 
aspirations  in  the  Far  East — Results  of  German  policy  from  1890 
to  1898,  Adowa,  Port  Arthur,  Manchuria,  Fashoda — Importance 
of  the  date  of  1898 — The  Balkans  and  Europe — The  Dreyfus  affair 
— Germany  triumphant,  Italy,  England  and  France  unhappy 
Powers — Italian  mediations:  a  Franco-Italian  entente — The  Medi- 
terranean policy  of  M.  Delcn?.s«? — Effects  of  Transvaal  War — The 
Anglo-French  agreement  of  1904. 


CONTENTS  xvii 


CHAPTER  VIH 

THE  CASE  OP  EUBOPE:  CONSEQUENCES  OP  EUROPEAN  EVENTS 

SINCE  THE  FRANCO- GERMAN  WAR 66 

The  dove-tailing  ot  the  nations — National  interests  matters  of  • 
international  concern — Sense  of  the  word  "  Nationalities  "  for 
Louis  Napoleon — Results  of  his  pathetic  blunder — Mystical  states- 
men— "The  International  Mind" — The  commonsense  view  of 
Spinoza:  human  passions  "  properties  "  of  human  nature — Resist- 
ance of  England  to  the  influences  making  for  the  dove-tailing  of 
the  nations — Detailed  examination  of  the  doctrine  of  "  splendid 
isolation  " — The  Rise  of  German  naval  power  and  its  effect  on 
England's  policy — Sir  Edward  Grey  on  the  Liberal  policy  of  indis- 
criminate interference  in  world  affairs — Necessity  for  England  of  a 
military  convention  with  France. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  CASE  OF  EUROPE:  SUMMARY  OF  THE  CONSEQUENCES  OF 

EUROPEAN  EVENTS  SINCE  THE  FRANCO-GERMAN  WAR      .      77 

A  now  era  opened  in  Europe  by  the  Anglo -French  Entente — 
William  II  at  Tangiers — German  aims  to  destroy  the  friendship 
between  France  and  England — The  fall  of  M.  Delcass6 — Unex- 
pected consequences:  revival  of  French  national  spirit. 


SECOND  BOOK 

The  Domestic  Crises  of  the  European  States  and  the  Foreign 
Policy  of  the  Powers. 

French  Domestic  Politics  and  British  Domestic  Politics  and 
German  Foreign  Policy. 

CHAPTER  I 
THE  STABILITY  OF  JTHE  FRENCH  REPUBLIC        ....      83 

Influence  of  French  homo  politics  on  French  policy — Necessity 
of  examining  French  domestic  politics  to  understand  European 
history — Pretensions  of  the  foreigner  to  meddle  in  French  affairs — 
France,  the  most  stable  and  conservative  state  in  Europe. 

CHAPTER  II 
CHURCH  AND  STATE  IN  FRANCE 85 

The  expulsion  of  religious  orders,  the  abolition  of  the  Concordat 
and  disestablishment  of  the  Churches,  a  logical  incident  in  develop- 
ment of  French  Society — History  of  France,  steady  effort  of  secu- 


xviii  CONTENTS 


larization — Foundation  of  the  Republic,  a  "  necessary  accident  " — 
Difficulties  that  heset  its  founders — The  Constitution  of  1875 — 
Attitude  of  the  Catholic  Church  towards  the  Republican  regime — 
The  French  clergy  functionaries  of  the  State — Condition  of  servility 
of  the  bishops  owing  to  the  Concordat — Political  utility  of  mainten- 
ance of  Concordat  during  early  period  of  the  Republic — Advantages 
of  the  pact  slowly  transferred  to  the  Catholics  owing  to  new  social 
legislation — R61e  of  the  French  clergy  during  period  of  Republican 
combat  against  reactionary  parties — The  Syllabus  of  Pius  IX — 
Collusion  between  Anti-Republican  parties  and  the  French  Catholics 
— "  Le  clericalisme,  voila  1'ennemi  " — Catholic  persecution  of  the 
Republic — Counter-persecution  of  the  Catholics  by  fanatical  Repub  - 
licans — A  national  school  system — Hostile  attitude  of  the  clergy 
to  the  State  schools — Catholic  political  organizations — Episcopal 
breaches  of  the  Concordat — The  accession  of  Leo  XIII — Bou- 
langism — Leo  XIII's  encyclical  recommending  submission  to  the 
Government — Conciliatory  temper  of  French  Government — Ideal 
of  an  open  and  tolerated  Republic — Attitude  of  the  irreconcilable 
reactionaries,  revival  of  hostilities — The  Meline  Ministry,  the  Drey- 
fus case,  the  Croix,  the  "  Nationalists  " — Republican  defence  under 
Waldeck-Rousseau — The  Associations  Law  of  1901 — Excessive 
abuse  of  this  law  by  M.  Combes:  State  persecution  of  religious 
orders — Impolitic  attitude  of  the  Vatican — M.  Loubet's  visit  to 
Italy — The  "  Temporal  Power  " — Rupture  of  the  Concordat — 
Consequent  embarrassment  of  France  as  regards  its  foreign  rela- 
tions. 

CHAPTER  III 
THE  DREYFUS  CASE 109 

Its  politico  -religious  character — Conflict  between  two  French 
ideals :  la  raison,  d'etat  and  les  droits  de  I'homme — Almost  universal 
ignorance  of  real  significance  of  this  ten  years'  civil  war — Foreign 
incapacity  to  understand  real  character  of  French  form  of  civiliza- 
tion— Construction  of  a  strongly -centralized  Power,  the  real  evolu- 
tion of  France — Revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes — Logical  fitness 
of  sacrifice  of  individual  in  French  State — Antisemitism,  anti- 
Protestantism — French  characteristics  explained  by  nature  of 
French  political  and  social  evolution — The  "  genius  "  of  France 
contrasted  with  the  "  genius  "  of  other  countries — Natural  division 
of  Frenchmen  into  Dreytusists  and  Anti-Dreyfusists — Two  legiti- 
mate forms  of  French  patriotism — Pressure  by  the  foreigner  a 
necessary  condition  of  French  national  unity. 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  EVOLUTION  OF  FRANCE  .        .        .114 

"  The  only  absolute  fact  in  the  world  is  that  all  things  are  rela- 
tive " — The  Postman's  Strike,  1909,  and  the  Jacquerie  in  the  Cham- 
pagne district,  1911,  indications  of  the  crisis  of  the  State  in  France 
— Necessity  of  studying  in  detail  the  political  and  administrative 
organization  of  France — Purely  relative  character  of  socio-political 
phenomena — General  cause  of  the  crisis  of  the  State  in  France, 
clash  between  Napoleonic  administration  and  Parliament — Pecu- 
liarity of  French  Parliamentary  Government:  antinomy  between 
representative  government  and  the  French  civil  service  system — 
Bight  million  voters  and  nine  hundred  thousand  functionaries — 


CONTENTS  xix 

MM 

Omnipotence  of  the  deputy — Effect  of  the  syndical  movement  on 
the  centralized  French  administration — Proposed  solution:  a  bill 
determining  the  status  of  civil  servants — Malady  of  France,  a  con- 
fusion of  powers — Social  unrest  in  France,  legitimate  ground  for 
optimism — Craving  for  reform — Question  of  "  Pretenders  " — 
Government  in  France,  the  tyrannical  monopoly  of  a  minority — 
Absence  of  a  constitutional  opposition  in  France — No  real  parlia- 
mentary government — The  Constitution  of  1875  a  concoction  of 
the  Orleanists,  intended  to  facilitate  restoration  of  the  monarchy — 
Irreconcilability  of  the  Royalist  Constitution  of  1875  and  the  Re- 
publico-Napoleonic  Administration — French  civic  and  social  irre- 
sponsibility— Disappearance  of  spirit  of  authority — Tyranny  of  the 
deputy  in  France — The  idealistic  Republican  period — Scrutin  de 
liste  and  Scrutin  d'arrondissement — Necessity  of  re-establishment 
of  the  principle  of  separation  of  powers — Need,  to  this  end,  of 
creation  of  a  party  system,  based  on  reform  of  the  electoral  law 
which  has  produced  in  France  a  tyrannical  boss-system — Need  of 
decentralization  and  of  an  independent  magistracy  (study  of  the 
r31e  of  the  Conseil  d'Etat) — Need  of  organizing  the  status  of  func- 
tionaries— Reasons  for  optimism  as  to  Frenchmen's  capacity  to 
effect  the  necessary  reform?. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  BALKAN  QUESTION,  AND  THE  RELATIONS  BETWEEN  THE 
MEMBERS  OF  THE  TRIPLE  ENTENTE  PRIOR  TO  THE  "Coup 
D'AGADIB". 148 

Before  dealing  with  the  British  internal  orisis  advisability  of 
summarizing  previous  chapters  in  connexion  with  the  Balkan  Ques- 
tion— Germany  and  the  Eastern  Question — Plausible  explanation 
of  German  policy  after  1904 — The  Young  Turks  and  Macedonia — 
The  Committee  of  Union  and  Progress — Presumption  of  its  Mem- 
bers— Possibility  of  Balkan  Federation  including  Turkey — The 
Turkish  Revolution — Inevitable  Growth  of  the  Balkan  League — 
The  Berlin  Treaty  and  the  Treaty  of  San  Stefano — Anti-German 
policy  of  Bismarck — Temporary  success  of  German  policy,  however, 
during  the  period  from  1904  to  the  formation  of  the  Balkan  League 
and  to  the  Coup  d'Agadir — Anglo -Franco -Russian  ataxy — Eng- 
land's indifference  and  irresolution,  prior  to  Agadir,  owing  to  her 
grave  domestic  situation — Russia's  parallel  absorption  in  her  home 
affairs — Summary  of  French  feeling  with  regard  to  the  significance 
of  the  Alliance  with  Russia — Germany's  attempts  to  utilize  the  Alli- 
ance in  her  own  interests — Birth  of  the  Entente  Cordiale — Discom- 
fiture and  embarrassment  of  Germany — Causes  of  the  growth  in 
France  of  a  European  sense — Reasons  for  her  keen  concern  as  to 
England's  domestic  affairs — Surprise  In  France  at  the  persistence  In 
England  in  1910  and  1911  of  ignorance  as  to  the  strategic  conditions 
governing  European  politics — France  has  learned  the  lessons  of  ex- 
perience— Practical  interpretation  by  the  French  of  the  meaning  ol 
the  words  "  Triple  Entente  " — Inability  of  England  and  Russia  to 
realize  the  real  conditions  of  European  equilibrium — Doubts  in 
France  as  to  the  utility  of  the  Entente — England  about  to  be  roused 
from  her  lethargy  by  the  Coup  d'Agadir — The  havoc  wrought, 
meanwhile,  by  Mr.  Taft's  proposals  relative  to  the  settlement  of 
"  matters  of  national  honour  "  by  Courts  of  Arbitration — Optical 
illusion  of  the  foreigner  as  to  the  "  real  France  " — The  real  France, 
a  France  aware  of  its  responsibilities  as  an  integral  part  of  conti- 


xx  CONTENTS 


nental  European  soil — The  question  of  Alsace-Lorraine — Text  of  the 
declaration  of  French  deputies  protesting  against  the  alienation  of 
Alsace-Lorraine — European  armaments,  the  result  of  seizure  by 
Germany  of  the  two  French  provinces — French  feeling  as  to  Mr. 
Taft's  proposals  relative  to  arbitration — Impossibility  of  disarma- 
ment for  France — Self-respect  requires  France  never  to  forget 
Alsace-Lorraine — Criticism  of  The  Great  Illusion  by  Mr.  Norman 
Angell — Feeling  in  Alsace-Lorraine  as  regards  France  and  Germany 
— The  New  Constitution  for  the  Reichsland — The  buffer-States 
between  France  and  Germany — Worthlessness  of  international 
treaties  not  based  on  common  interests — The  spoils-policy  ol  the 
cave-dweller  identical  with  the  modern  "  principle  of  neighbourhood 
rights  " — Meaning  for  Frenchmen  of  the  word  "  national-honour  " 
-"  Neighbourhood  rights  "  and  Holland — The  fortification  of 
Flushing — Necessity  of  converting  the  Entente  Cordiale  into  a  close 
Dual  Alliance — The  beatific  apathy  of  England  in  1910  and  1911 
contrasted  with  France's  sceptical  vigilance. 

CHAPTER  VI 
THE  "Coup  D'AQADIR"  AND  BRITISH  DOMESTIC  POLITICS       .    198 

Despatch,  July  1911,  of  a  German  armed  vessel  to  Agadlr — 
Motives  of  this  surprising  act — The  Franco-German  Agreement  of 
1909 — German  misconception  of  the  internal  condition  of  France 
and  England — British  constitutional  crisis — General  considera- 
tions as  to  Parliamentary  Government — Modern  social  legislation — 
Lord  Morley  on  danger  of  entrusting  public  affairs  to  doctrinaire 
politicians — The  British  Parliament  Bill — Party  government  and 
the  "  rights  of  the  majority  " — The  "  Royal  Prerogative  " — Lack 
of  checks  to  hasty  legislation:  Single-Chamber  government — Was 
the  British  parliamentary  crisis  a  constitutional  crisis  ? — Effects 
of  crisis  in  England  on  England's  position  abroad — Reciprocity 
between  the  United  States  and  Canada — Tendency  of  British  Em- 
pire to  disintegration — Opinion  in  Canada,  opinion  in  the  United 
States,  opinion  in  England — Contagion  of  American  ideas  in 
Canada;  Canadian  forms  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine — Sir  Wilfrid 
Laurier's  attitude  at  the  Imperial  Conference — Sudden  effect  of 
Germany's  action  in  Morocco — Reciprocity  buried,  the  Anglo- 
American  arbitration  treaty  paralysed,  Mr.  Borden  the  new  Prime 
Minister  of  an  awakened  Canada — Real  identity  of  the  ends  sought 
by  Sir  W.  Laurier  and  Mr.  Borden — England  saved. 


THIRD  BOOK 

Economic  Factors  affecting  the  Political  Attitude  of  Modern 
States. 

CHAFIER  I 
CONTEMPORARY  MONEY-GETTING  AND  MODERN  IDEALISM          .    225 

Statement  of  the  problem  of  this  "  Book  " — Modern  peoples 
want  Reform  as  much  as  they  want  Money — Are  these  oraviugd 
different  aspects  of  the  same  state  of  mind? 


CONTENTS  xxi 


CHAPTER  II 

WORKING-CLASS  MIGRATION,  LABOUR  PROTECTIONISM,  AND  IN- 
DUSTRIAL INTERNATIONALISM 227 

The  "  Internationale  " — The  world-wide  emigration  of  the  work- 
ing-man— Demand  lor  protection  on  the  part  of  labour-syndicates 
against  competition  of  transient  foreign  labour — Detailed  analysis 
of  this  phenomenon — Signor  Giuseppe  Prato's  book — Typical 
illustrations  of  the  movement:  the  Case  of  Luxembourg  and  of 
the  Valley  of  the  Mouse — International  frontiers  scaled  by  the 
nomad  labourer — The  German  metallurgists  and  Luxembourg  inde- 
pendence— The  interest  of  France  in  this  question. 

CHAPTER  III 
GERMAN  COMMERCIAL  EXPANSION 238 

The  flag  follows  trade — Industrial  development  of  Germany — 
Plausible  reasons  for  growth  of  German  naval  estimates — Ger- 
many's ambiguous  action  as  regard's  England's  proposals  for  dis- 
armament— The  peace  of  the  world  depends  on  Germany,  likewise 
her  own  prosperity — By  abandoning  an  aggressive  policy  Germany 
could  outstrip  all  the  Powers — Her  genius  for  the  only  kind  of 
colonial  expansion  that  tells — German  colonizers  are  of  the  cuckoo  - 
race — Germany,  a  parvenu  Power,  and  a  legitimate  object  of  sym- 
pathy owing  to  the  nature  of  her  national  problems — In  inter- 
national relations  Germany  reduced  to  a  day-by-day  policy  of  op- 
portunism— Optimism  of  the  plutocratic  Germany  oligarchy — Ger- 
man Commercial  Imperialism  in  Soiith  America — Pan-Germanism 
and  the  Monroe  Doctrine — Germans  ceasing  to  emigrate — Neces- 
sity of  an  open  market  for  purchase  of  essential  products — The 
various  stages  of  Germany's  fiscal  policy — Her  flexible,  but  pre- 
carious, banking  system — The  lesson  of  September  and  October, 
1911 — The  legend  of  the  "  encirclement  "  of  Germany — Germany 
has  no  legitimate  grievance — Peculiar  German  view  that  the  world 
otccs  her  something:  "  theory  of  compensations  " — Germany  treats 
other  world-tribes  as  primitive  peoples :  the  match -striking  trick — 
The  imperious  call  of  iron — Curious  interdependence  of  French  Iron- 
masters and  German  mining  proprietors — German  efforts  to  bribe 
Franco  into  dangerous  financial  and  commercial  arrangements — 
An  economic  forecast — The  German  Emperor  and  Corneille. 

CHAPTER  IV 
GENERAL  CONCLUSIONS  FROM  THE  FOREGOING  ECONOMIC  FACTS    262 

The  facts  adduced  in  preceding  chapter  may  be  used  indiscrimi- 
nately by  the  apostles  of  peace  and  the  prophets  of  war — Fresh 
proofs  of  importance  of  part  played  by  public  opinion  and  inter- 
national finance — Public  opinion  to-day,  often  more  bellicose  than 
Governments. 

CHAPTER  V 
THE  INDUSTRIAL  AND  FINANCIAL  ORGANIZATION  OF  FRANCE    .    265 

Criticism  of  the  admirable  French  credit  system — Necessity  of 
reform  of  French  banking  system — Question  of  credit  for  sma  11  shop- 
keepers and  business  men — The  question  of  the  exodus  of  French 


xxii  CONTENTS 


capital — Lack  of  private  initiative  and  individual  responsibility  In 
France — The  French  testamentary  law — The  depopulation  of 
France — Complex  causes  of  the  enfeeblement  of  the  spirit  of  enter- 
prise, consequent  on  French  thrift — Political  and  social  advantages 
of  French  economic  and  industrial  backwardness — France,  the 
most  conservative,  least  revolutionary,  of  nations — Potential  useful 
rdle  of  syndicalism. 

CHAPTER  VI 

THE   POLITICO-ECONOMIC   RELATIONS   BETWEEN   FRANCE   AND 

GERMANY 276 

Radical  difference  of  temperament  between  the  two  peoples: 
impossibility  of  understanding  each  other's  points  of  view — Diplo- 
matic methods  of  France :  diplomatic  methods  of  Germany — "  Busi- 
ness "  the  sole  principle  of  German  diplomatic  action — These  ideas 
illustrated  by  the  history  of  the  diplomatic  relations  between 
France  and  Germany  since  1909 — The  Agreement  of  1909 — A 
method  of  solving  the  Moroccan  problem  that  would  have  de- 
stroyed the  Entente  Cordiale—  Franco-German  Economic  Co- 
operation: the  Ngoko-Sangha;  Scheme  for  a  railway  through  the 
French  Congo  and  the  German  Cameroons — The  Caillaux  Ministry ; 
the  r&le  of  M.  Andr6  Tardieu — The  Franco-German  Treaty  of 
November  4,  1911. 

CHAPTER  VII 

PREDOMINANCE  or  SOCIAL,  ECONOMIC  AND  FINANCIAL,  OVER 

POLITICAL,  QUESTIONS 286 

The  first  obligation  of  the  modern  diplomatists,  acquaintance 
with  economic  facts — Necessity  of  scrutinizing  diplomatic  instru- 
ments to  the  letter,  illustrated  by  Franco-German  Treaty  and 
numerous  instances — Two  remarkable  and  typical  illustrations  of 
the  increasing  force  of  financial  considerations  in  determining  the 
policy  of  States:  the  Turco-Italian  War  and  Servia's  struggle  for 
economic  emancipation — Final  answer  to  the  question  formulated 
in  first  chapter  of  this  "  Book." 


FOURTH    BOOK 

The  Present  Outlook. 

CHAPTER  I 

GERMANY  AFTER  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  HER  MOROCCAN  DIFFI- 
CULTIES WITH  FRANCE 295 

Failure  of  German  efforts  to  sunder  England,  France  and  Russia 
— The  Moroccan  Question  settled,  yet  the  Great  Misunderstanding 
persists — World-wide  consequences  of  Germany's  foreign  policy — 
Germany  temporarily  learns  the  lesson  of  her  discomfiture — The 
meeting  of  the  German  Emperor  and  the  Tsar  at  Port-Baltic — Ger- 
many's confession  on  that  occasion — Baron  Marschall  von  Bieber- 
stein  and  his  successor — Necessity  for  the  members  of  the  Triple 
Entente  to  keep  ever  before  them  the  precariousness  of  European 
peace,  owing  to  peculiar  condition  of  Germany. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  PRESENT  GROUPING  OF  THE  POWERS:  How  THE  RELATIONS 

BETWEEN   THE   GROUPS  CAN   BE   MAINTAINED          .  .  .      302 

The  real  conditions  of  international  peace — Germany  remains 
Germany  in  spite  of  the  Balkan  League — Field  of  common  action 
of  the  members  of  the  Triple  Entente — The  necessary  preliminary 
of  such  action — The  "  European  Concert  "  no  longer  possible — The 
kind  of  international  business  that  can  be  carried  on  with  Germany 
— Views  of  the  ex-President  of  the  Iron  and  Steel  Institute — The 
limits  of  England's  "  business-relations  "  with  Germany. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  DOMESTIC  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  MEMBERS  OF  THE  TRIPLE 

ENTENTE 309 

The  internal  problems  confronting  France,  England  and  Russia 
— Rapid  improvement  in  the  domestic  situation  in  France — Prob- 
lems now  being  solved — The  case  of  England — The  admirable  con- 
sequences of  the  incident  of  Agadir — Formation  of  a  Common- 
wealth of  British  nations — Growth  of  a  sense  of  unity — The  Im- 
perial symbol  of  unity :  sudden  aggrandizement  of  the  constitutional 
significance  of  the  sovereign — King  George — Construction  of  a 
brand  new  Imperial  Constitution  now  imperative. 

CHAPTER  IV 

SPHERES  OF  COMMON  ACTION  OF  THE  TRIPLE  ENTENTE  :  THE 

NORTH  SEA  .  .    318 


CHAPTER  V 

SPHERES  OF  COMMON  ACTION  OF  THE  TRIPLE  ENTENTE  :  THE 

MEDITERRANEAN 319 

The  lapsing  of  the  Triple  Alliance — Utility  of  its  renewal — Cir- 
cumstances in  which  Italy  decided  to  renew  the  Alliance — Real 
nature  of  the  Triple  Alliance:  a  self-denying  ordinance  between 
three  mortal  enemies — Chronic  and  latent  hostility  between  Italy 
and  Austria:  the  Tripolitan  expedition  and  Albania — Italian 
nationalism — The  Triple  Entente  has  need  of  the  Triple  Alliance  to 
simplify  its  own  problems — Common  aims  of  France  and  England 
in  the  Mediterranean — Effects  of  the  Italo-Turkish  War  and  of  the 
victories  of  the  Balkan  States — Kirk-Kiliss6,  the  beginning  of  a  new 
era — Turkey  no  longer  a  European  Power — Consequences  of  this 
fact :  effect  on  Russia ;  effect  on  Germany ;  effect  on  Austria-Hun- 
gary— Detailed  analysis  of  the  new  situation  of  Austria-Hungary — 
Kirk-Kiliss6,  a  blessing  in  disguise  for  Austria — Crispi's  interview 
with  Bismarck  in  1877 — The  re-birth  of  German  Austria — Effect  of 
this  new  situation  on  Italy — Italy  humiliated  by  Austria  and  Ger- 
many at  the  Berlin  Congress — Steady  encroachments  of  Austria  in 
the  Eastern  Adriatic — Forms  assumed  by  Italian  vengeance — Italy's 
"  insurance  "  treaties  with  England  and  France  concerning  the 
Mediterranean — Remarkable  results  of  Italian  diplomacy — Italy's 


XXIV 


probable  future  policy — The  New  Year's  day  speech  of  M.  Barrere 
— Settlement  of  the  questions  raised  by  Italo-Turkish  War  and  by 
the  success  of  the  Balkan  League,  will  be  the  supreme  test  of  the 
solidity  of  the  Triple  Entente. 

CHAPTER  VI 

SPHERES  OF  COMMON  ACTION  OF  THE  TRIPLE  ENTENTE:  THE 

FAR  EAST 347 

The  three  special  arrangements  fixing  the  conditions  of  action 
in  the  Far  East — The  Russo-Japanese  Agreement,  and  the  duties 
thereby  imposed  on  England  and  France — Mr.  Taft's  Manohurian 
policy  and  the  Opeu  Door — The  Russo -Mongolian  Agreement — The 
Anglo-Japanese  treaties  of  alliance  and  the  Taft  project  of  unre- 
stricted arbitration — The  bugaboo  of  the  Yellow  Peril — Advantages 
for  Great  Britain,  France  and  the  United  States  ol  Russo -Japanese 
co-operation  in  China — Japan,  pacific :  her  policy  of  retrenchment — 
Projects  for  the  opening  of  the  hinterland  of  Asia  to  the  play  of 
economic  and  financial  forces — The  Trans -Persian  Railway. 


SPHERES  OF  COMMON  ACTION  or  THE  TRIPLE  ENTENTE:  THE 

CARIBBEAN 354 

Close  of  the  era  of  "  narrow  views  " — The  opening  of  the  Panama 
Canal — The  Powers  are  rushing  into  the  Caribbean — France  and 
England  confronted  in  the  American  Mediterranean  with  a  new 
Power — Is  the  United  States  yet  aware  of  the  changes  in  store  for 
her  owing  to  the  Panama  revolution  and  the  construction  of  the 
Canal  1 — Summary  of  growth  of  American  Imperialism  after  the 
Spanish-American  War — Difficulty  of  readjustment  of  Monroe 
Doctrine  to  modern  conditions — Immediate  necessity  for  the 
United  States  to  adopt  a  consistent  world-policy — American  coast- 
wise trade  and  fortification  of  the  Panama  Canal — The  Canal  and 
the  Dardanelles — Suggestion  of  Italian  confiscation  of  foreign  life- 
insurance  companies  established  in  Italy — Opinion  of  international 
jurists  on  limits  set  to  the  rights  of  a  State  to  legislate  in  sovereign 
independence — Need  of  tha  United  States  to  construct  a  powerful 
battle  fleet — The  fate  of  the  United  States  sealed  by  her  decision 
to  build  the  Panama  Canal — The  United  States  has  come  forth 
definitively  from  her  magnificent  isolation — The  Canadian  frontier, 
a  frontier  of  the  British  Empire — The  question  no  longer  is:  "Is 
an  Anglo -American  alliance  useful  1"  but  "  Is  an  Anglo -American 
Alliance  imperative  }" — The  warring  interests  of  the  Powers  in  the 
Pacific — Asiatic  immigration — Shifting  of  geographical  centre  of 
gravity  from  the  Mediterranean  to  the  Caribbean — Practical  conse- 
quences for  the  United  States — Necessity  of  an  understanding 
with  the  British  Empire — The  dream  of  Jefferson — Preparations 
of  the  Powers  to  establish  themselves  in  the  Pacific — The  French 
"  all-blue  "  route — A  Franco-Anglo-American  pact  for  the  peace  of 
the  world. 


INDEX          .        .        .  375 


BOOK  I 


BOOK  I 


BEHIND  the  fa$ade  of  Governments  two  occult  powers 
are  now  determining  the  destinies  of  the  world. 

One  of  these  is  the  disseminated  Wealth  of  the  Democ- 
racy, canalized  both  by  the  plutocratic  oligarchy  of  the 
Bankers  (la  Haute  Finance),  whose  clients,  the  Modem 
States,  great  and  small,  are  constrained  to  apply  to  them 
for  immense  loans,  and  by  the  great  manufacturers  and 
mining  proprietors,  who  tend  to  be  actuated  solely  by 
economic  interest,  and  who  often  combine  in  international 
trusts,  the  operations  of  which  are  merely  hampered  by 
patriotic  questions  of  national  policy  and  national  honour. 

The  other  power  is  the  mysterious  pervasive  force  known 
as  Public  Opinion,  which  is  becoming  more  and  more 
conscious  of  its  efficacy,  and,  as  its  curiosity  concerning 
the  public  weal  and  concerning  international  facts  and 
correlations  grows  more  alert,  is  manifesting  a  propor- 
tionately livelier  jealousy  of  its  prerogatives. 


II 

It  is  a  commonplace  to  say  that  the  entire  social  edifice 
is  reared  on  a  substructure  of  economic  interests.  From 
the  colonizing  activity  of  the  Greeks,  in  the  Dark  Ages 
before  Soion,  seeking  in  Sicily  and  on  the  north  shores  of 
the  Pontus  the  foreign  corn  which  their  own  land  could 

8 


4  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

not  produce,1  to  the  period  of  Caesar's  colonial  expeditions 
in  Gaul;  from  the  Spanish  voyages  into  the  West  in 
search  of  the  wealth  of  the  Indies,  and  from  the  declar- 
ation of  American  Independence,  consequent  upon  the 
violation  of  the  principle  of  no  taxation  without  represen- 
tation, to  the  most  recent  consortium  of  Franco-German 
capitalists  in  the  Congo,  or  to  the  episodes  connected 
with  the  efforts  of  the  Chinese  Republic  to  negotiate  loans 
with  the  Western  Powers,  money  has  been  the  key  that 
generally  unlocks  the  problems  of  history.  For  instance, 
the  development  of  the  transport  system  in  America  is 
part  not  only  of  the  social  and  political,  and  even 
Constitutional,  evolution  of  the  United  States,  but  also 
of  the  economic  and  social  development  of  Europe.2 
The  detailed  history  of  the  European  State  loans  to  the 
Turkish  Government,  from  the  Crimean  War  to  1912,  and 
of  the  development  of  the  Administration  of  the  Public 
Debt,  in  consequence  of  the  activity  of  the  bankers  of 
Galata,  is  a  tale  of  usury  at  which  even  the  imagina- 
tion of  a  Prince  of  Golconda  would  marvel,  but  it  is 
likewise  one  of  the  salient  chapters  of  world-history,  and 
it  concerns  not  merely  the  Anatolian  peasant,  but  the 
British  publican,  the  New  England  farmer  and  the  Breton 
sailor.  In  one  great  modern  State  in  particular,  the 
French  Republic,  eight  or  nine  gigantic  establishments 
of  credit  have  formed  a  veritable  trust  which  has  tended 
to  kill  the  minor  banks,  and,  by  whetting  the  French 

1  See  Thucydides  and  the  History  of  His  Age,  by  G.  B.  Grundy, 
pp.  58-96.  (Murray,  1911.) 

a  "  The  stake  of  Europe  in  the  United  States  is  now  considerably  over 
$5,000,000,000,  and  at  a  moderate  estimate  its  stake  in  the  railways  is 
upwards  of  $4,000,000,000.  Consequently,  everything  that  concerns 
the  welfare  of  the  American  people  in  general,  and  of  the  American 
railway  industry  in  particular,  is  of  direct  practical  interest  to  European 
investors.  .  .  ."— The  Statist,  July  26,  1913. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     5 

middle-class  distrust  of  modern  democratic  social  legisla- 
tion, have  cultivated  the  prejudice  that  French  securities 
are  unsafe,  and  thereby  so  monopolized  the  employment 
of  the  public  wealth  that  France  may  be  said  without 
exaggeration  to  be  virtually  a  financial  monarchy.  The 
apathy  of  the  French  parliament  as  regards  the  construc- 
tion of  great  public  works,  such  as  modern  ports  and 
canals,  is  often  cited  as  one  of  the  main  causes  of  the 
relative  industrial  backwardness  of  France,  and  of  the 
increasing  invasion  of  French  territory  by  enterprising 
German,  Belgian  or  Swiss  capitalists.  A  more  potent 
cause  assuredly  is  the  fact  that  a  large  proportion  of  French 
savings  are  systematically  exported  abroad,  on  the  pre- 
text of  assisting  needy  foreign  States  while  affording  safe 
investments  to  the  French  rentier,  but,  in  reality,  with  the 
object  of  securing  monstrous  profits  which  benefit  only 
the  banks  in  question,  a  few  intermediaries  and  a  certain 
section  of  the  press,  and  with  the  result  of  developing  the 
wealth  and  the  defensive  force  of  rival  peoples,  favouring 
the  depopulation  of  France,  and  preparing  the  gravest 
complications  for  that  country  in  case  of  a  European  war.1 

1  During  the  Balkan  Scare  of  October  1912  no  country,  not  even 
Austria-Hungary,  was  so  immediately  interested  in  the  maintenance 
of  peace  as  France.  More  than  one  thousand  million  francs  of  French 
capital  have  been  lent  to  Rumania,  Bulgaria  and  Servia.  M.  Alfred 
Neymarck,  the  Vice- President  of  the  French  "  Society  of  Political 
Economy,"  states  (vide  L' Information,  January  10,  1913)  that  France 
possesses  at  present,  in  foreign  State  bonds  and  foreign  securities,  forty 
milliards  of  francs,  paying  an  annual  interest  of  about  two  milliards. 
He  argues  that  "  a  great  country  which  has  at  its  disposal  a  consider- 
able stock  of  annual  savings,  and  which,  after  having  satisfied  its  own 
needs,  employs  a  part  of  its  savings  in  carefully  chosen  investments  in 
foreign  State  bonds  and  foreign  securities — without  hampering  its 
national  foreign  policy,  and  after  having  taken  all  necessary  guarantees 
— far  from  impoverishing  itself,  puts  money  by."  This  is  incontestable. 
But  M.  Neymarck,  in  this  carefully  worded  sentence,  begs  the  whole 
question.  The  question  is  whether  France  is  now  "  satisfying  its  own 


PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 


III 

The  other  power,  the  power  of  Public  Opinion,  has  not 
been  a  steady  factor  in  the  evolution  of  society.  Though 
preponderant  in  Greece  after  the  Medic  wars,  and  not  less 
obviously  potent  at  many  another  moment  of  history — in 
the  Europe  of  the  Crusades,  in  the  France  of  1789,  in  the 
American  Colonies  prior  to  the  Revolution,  in  the  Italy  of 
Garibaldi,  or  in  that  of  1911  and  1912,  and  in  the  Balkans 
of  the  autumn  and  winter  of  1 912 — it  has  not  been  one  of 
the  constant  determinants  of  historical  events.  There 
have  been  vast  periods  when  societies  have  apathetically 
allowed  themselves  to  be  governed  by  rulers  whom  they 
had  not  chosen  or  even  sanctioned:  whole  epochs  when, 
owing  to  the  inorganic  character  of  the  community,  no 
national  self-consciousness  could  thrive,  and  when  the 
destinies  of  a  people  seemed  committed  to  the  accidental 
charge  of  a  mere  handful  of  men. 

A  different  state  of  things  characterizes  the  present 
period.  The  varied  facilities  for  the  dissemination  of 
ideas  have  resuscitated  the  authority  of  Public  Opinion, 
stimulated  its  energy,  and  increased  it  a  thousand-fold. 
No  sociological  phenomenon  has  greater  importance  to- 
day than  the  reappearance  of  Demos  in  discussions  of 
problems  which,  at  certain  moments  of  the  past,  have 

needs,"  before  lending  money  abroad,  and  whether  "  all  necessary 
guarantees"  are  being  taken  before  sending  a  part  of  its  money  out 
of  the  country.  Financial  protection  and  financial  nationalism  are 
absurd.  It  is  a  policy  which  even  the  socialist  leader,  M.  Jaures,  has 
called  etroit  et  sterilisant  ;  and,  as  M.  Briand  recently  said  in  the  French 
Chamber  of  Deputies,  c'est  une  force  pour  le  pays  qu'on  ait  a  1'exterieur 
If,  desir  de  son  or  ;  but  a  country  should  always  have  the  control  of  its 
money  market,  and  the  present  fiscal  regime  in  France,  whatever  its 
advantages,  is  in  certain  respects  open  to  adverse  criticism.  See 
p.  265  et  seq. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS      7 

been  debated  between  a  responsible  few  in  the  ivory 
towers  of  diplomacy.  An  Aehrenthal  and  a  Prince  of 
Bulgaria  may  still  effectively  conspire  to  tear  up  a 
"  Treaty  of  Berlin,"  and  a  half-dozen  Indian  specialists 
may,  of  their  own  initiative,  secure  the  consent  of  the 
British  India  office  and  of  the  Emperor  of  India  to  a 
measure  revolutionizing  the  administration  of  Hindustan ; 
but  the  consequences  of  these  acts  are  not  spent;  Public 
Opinion  alone  is  to  determine  their  direction — and  how 
pretend  even  that  such  acts  have  been  "  accomplished  " 
until,  some  years  hence,  it  shall  be  possible  to  pronounce 
a  verdict  as  to  some  of  their  international  bearings  ? 


IV 

The  political  evolution  of  modern  Europe,  which  has 
been  the  fatal  consequence  of  the  method  mistakenly 
adopted  by  Prussian  statesmen  for  the  formation  of  a 
united  Germany — namely,  the  seizure  of  Alsace,  and  a 
part  of  Lorraine,  in  order  to  convert  those  French 
provinces  into  German  soil  intended  to  be  the  keystone  of 
the  Empire — this  evolution,  which  has  been  characterized 
by  the  incapacity  of  the  Great  Powers  to  settle  the  Eastern 
Question,  and  which  has  resulted  to-day  in  the  creation 
of  two  reciprocally  hostile  groups  of  virtually  allied 
nations,  the  Triple  Alliance  and  the  Triple  Entente,  has 
been  continually  affected,  frequently  hampered,  and 
partially  compromised,  by  the  action  of  a  set  of  general 
causes  which,  while  not  peculiar  to  the  present  time,  have 
never  been  manifested  so  unremittingly,  or  on  so  vast  a 
scale.  These  general  causes  are  the  whole  series  of 
economic  conditions  so  exceptionally  characteristic  of  our 
industrial  and  financial  period.  The  moment  is  one  in 
which  the  exchange  of  products,  the  marvellous  develop- 


8  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

ment  in  the  organization  of  credit,  and  the  intercommuni- 
cation of  discoveries  and  ideas,  are  altering  the  whole 
content  of  the  human  consciousness  and  the  moral  aspira- 
tions of  the  masses  of  mankind,  and  are  giving  an  inter- 
national aspect  to  many  a  social  problem  that  had  hitherto 
been  solely  national. 

Count  Berchtold,  the  successor  of  Count  Aehrenthal  in 
the  post  of  Austro -Hungarian  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs, 
addressing  the  Hungarian  Delegations  on  April  30,  1912, 
thus  summed  up  suggestively  the  political  aspect  of  the 
world-situation : — 

"  Until  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  grouping  of  the 
Powers  inaugurated  by  the  Triplice  appeared  to  be  merely  a  clearly 
defined  pattern.  Since  then,  in  consequence  of  England's  abandon- 
ment of  the  principle  of  splendid  isolation,  in  consequence  of  Japan's 
entrance  into  a  European  alliance,  in  consequence  of  the  working 
arrangement  between  Japan  and  Russia,  and,  what  is  no  less  important, 
in  consequence  of  the  determination,  by  agreement  among  the  Great 
European  Powers,  of  the  advantages  that  they  could  draw  from  Asia 
and  Africa,  a  closely  woven  network  of  agreements  and  ententes  has 
been  formed  between  the  Powers  belonging  to  the  same  groups  or  to 
different  groups,  a  fact  which  necessarily  profoundly  complicates  the 
international  situation.  We  must  not  forget  that  such  new  combina- 
tions may  help  to  temper  the  contrasted  differences  and  to  serve  the 
cause  of  peace.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  we  must  remember  that  the 
spheres  of  interest  recently  created  under  the  shelter  of  these  special 
agreements  have  brought  into  existence  other  points  of  contact  and 
other  zones  of  friction,  a  fact  that  has  introduced  into  foreign  politics 
an  element  of  trouble,  of  which  it  is  prudent  for  us  to  take  note  in 
time." 

The  counter  "  insurance  "  treaties  referred  to  by  the 
Austro-Hungarian  Foreign  Minister  are  indeed  among  the 
most  characteristic  marks  of  the  present  situation.  But 
they  are  superficial  phenomena,  the  sole  interest  of  which 
lies  in  the  fact  that  they  are  the  signs  of  essential  changes 
below  the  surface.  They  are  the  evidence,  not  of  a 
peaceful  world-condition,  but  of  a  latent  state-of-war. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS      9 

They  are  the  indication  of  the  risks  involved  in  the  ex- 
pansive tendency  of  modern  communities  under  the 
pressure  of  economic  motives;  they  are  the  necessary 
political  formulas  of  compromise  intended  to  conjure 
away  possibilities  of  international  collision  due  to  other 
than  political  causes. 

They  bear  witness,  thus,  to  the  most  salient  reality  of 
modern  civilization,  namely,  the  increasing  predominance 
of  economic  laws,  with  the  consequent  interpenetration  of 
peoples,  a  state  of  things  that  has  multiplied  zones  of 
friction  ;  the  blind  but  ineluctable  evolution  towards  a 
condition  of  "  socialistic  "  reciprocity,  coterminous  with 
the  circumference  of  the  planet,  and  tending  to  annihilate 
national  barriers. 

In  April  and  May,  1912,  the  Turks  temporarily  closed 
the  Dardanelles.  One  of  the  largest  markets  in  the  world 
was  thus  shut  off  from  the  activities  of  the  British  ship- 
owner. The  grain  of  Russia  was  left  to  rot  in  the  bins  of 
the  wharves  of  the  Black  Sea,  and  her  loss  amounted  to 
millions  of  pounds.  England  lost  £15,000  to  £20,000 
per  day;  Rumania,  Bulgaria,  Greece  as  much.  British 
steamers,  headed  for  the  Black  Sea,  had  to  be  diverted 
through  the  Suez  Canal  towards  Indian  markets,  with  the 
result  of  depressing  freights  from  the  East,  and  with  a 
consequent  further  loss  to  the  shipowner.  The  world 
was  thus  provided  with  a  singularly  clear  and  instructive 
object-lesson  in  International  Political  Economy.  The 
Turk  had  sealed  the  straits  and  he  awaited  the  result, 
while  the  nations  looked  helplessly  on.  It  was  merely  a 
laboratory  experiment  in  Physics  on  a  scale  sufficiently 
vast  to  permit  of  the  demonstration  being  visible  in  every 
quarter  of  the  Mediterranean  amphitheatre.  Lord  Lans- 
downe,  as  one  of  the  trained  observers  who  witnessed  the 
plight  of  the  185  vessels  anchored  east  and  west  of  Con- 


10  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

stantiiiople  on  May  2,  1912,  lost  no  time  in  deploring  the 
financial  losses  involved.  He  remarked  quietly  to  his 
colleagues  in  the  House  of  Lords  that  "  sooner  or  later  " 
the  nations  would  have  to  decide  to  what  extent  a  belliger- 
ent Power,  controlling  narrow  maters  which  form  a  great 
trade  avenue  for  the  commerce  of  the  world,  was  justified  in 
entirely  closing  such  an  avenue  in  order  to  facilitate  the 
hostile  operations  in  which  that  Power  might  find  itself 
involved.  And,  enlarging  the  inquiry  to  all  its  philo- 
sophic bearings,  he  observed:  "  Just  as  public  opinion  in 
any  country  would  be  slow  to  tolerate  arrangements  under 
which  a  local  trade  dispute  might  have  the  effect  of  para- 
lysing the  whole  industrial  life  of  the  country,  so  public 
opinion  amongst  the  Great  Nations  would  be  slow  to 
tolerate  a  state  of  things  under  which  a  local  conflict  in- 
volving only  two  Powers  would  be  allowed  to  create  such 
serious  detriment  and  disturbance  to  the  whole  trading 
community  of  the  world."  Thus,  in  Lord  Lansdowne's 
view,  the  lesson  taught  by  the  Dardanelles  experiment 
was  that  perhaps,  after  all,  the  life  and  death  interests 
even  of  two  nations  must,  in  certain  circumstances,  be 
sacrificed  to  the  interests  of  "  the  trading  community  of 
the  world."1 

1  The  first  Powers  practically  to  draw  the  lesson  of  the  Dardanelles 
incident  were  Russia  and  Rumania.  On  June  19,  1914,  they  made  a 
joint  representation  to  the  Porte,  to  the  effect  that  they  would  not 
allow  a  war  between  Turkey  and  Greece  to  hamper  freedom  of  naviga- 
tion between  the  Black  Sea  and  the  Mediterranean.  The  significance 
of  this  demonstration  in  affirmation  of  a  principle  on  which  Rumania 
and  Russia  are  at  one  was  enhanced  by  the  fact  that  the  step  thus  taken 
was  the  first  public  sign  of  the  solidarity  of  the  interests  of  these  two 
Powers  after  the  Inter-Balkan  War. 

It  may  be  added  that  the  lesson  of  the  Dardanelles  incident  is  an 
ominous  one  for  the  United  States,  when  that  incident  is  reviewed 
in  connexion  with  certain  potential  aspects  of  the  problem  of  the 
control  of  the  Panama  Canal  (see  p.  358  et  passim).  The  lesson,  more- 
over, will  have  eventually  to  be  learned  in  other  parts  of  the  world. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    11 

Whatever  the  verdict  on  this  question,  no  man  can  have 
any  doubt  that  the  question  has  arisen,  and  that  the 
reason  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact,  the  stupendous  modern 
fact,  of  the  predominance  to-day  of  economic  over  political 
conditions.  The  problem  of  the  maintenance  of  national 
traditions,  national  characteristics,  national  integrity  im- 
plies a  constant  compromise  between  world-interests, 
human  interests  in  general,  on  the  one  hand,  irrespective 
of  national  classifications,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  those 
sentimental,  hereditary,  beautifully  persistent  impulses 
and  prejudices  that  shape  a  nation's  soul,  as  such  a  soul 
has  been  created  by  the  interplay  of  historical  accidents 
and  geographical  determinism.  It  is  a  mark  of  the  time 
that  the  same  duel  which  formerly  took  place  in  France 
between  la  raison  d'etat  and  les  droits  de  Vhomme  is  now 
taking  place  between  national  patriotism  and  European, 
or  world,  patriotism.  Every  natural  impulse  of  conser- 
vative feeling  peculiar  to  the  citizens  of  whatever  country 
is  now  aggravated  by  the  necessity  of  self-preservation 
against  the  assaults  of  the  corrosive  influences,  economic 
and  financial,  set  to  work  by  modern  scientific  inventions. 
The  modern  outburst  of  nationalism  is  general.  A  quarter 
of  a  century  ago  the  ideal  of  the  federation  of  the  world 
and  the  parliament  of  man,  a  "  passion  for  the  planet," 
fired  many  a  heart.  To-day,  throughout  the  world,  the 
steady  encroachment  of  the  wave  of  imperialism  would 
make  Alexander  the  Great  or  Genghiz  Khan  feel  at 
home  in  both  hemispheres.  Nationalistic  concentration 
is  general.  Italy,  France,  England,  even  the  United 
States,  Austria,  China,  Turkey,  Canada,  the  Balkan 

There  is  a  "Question  of  Flushing"  which  will  one  day  have  to  be 
settled.  The  Scheldt  is  an  international  highway.  It  is  not  only  the 
natural  access  to  Antwerp;  it  is  one  of  the  historic  roads  between 
the  two  French  interior  ports,  Conde  and  Valenciennes,  and  the  sea. 


12  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

States,1  above  all  Germany,  impressively  illustrate  the 
strange,  apparently  reactionary  recoil.  At  Count  Aehren- 
thal's  death,  his  compatriots — who,  as  Mr.  Wickham  Steed 
wrote  in  The  Times,  are  not  given  to  critical  analysis,  but 
are  usually  guided  by  large  undifferential  impressions — 
mourned  the  loss  of  the  statesman  who  had  taken  Bosnia- 
Herzegovina,  but  chiefly  of  the  statesman  who  had 
affirmed  Austro-Hungarian  independence  of  Germany, 
and  who  had  caused  the  name  of  his  country  to  be  once 
again  respected  and  feared  in  the  world.  "  He  appealed  to 
their  pride,  which,  for  all  its  being  timidly  hidden  or  masked 
by  self -depreciation,  is  still  their  strongest  sentiment." 

Thus,  the  twentieth  century  tendency  will  almost  uni- 
formly be  found  to  be  towards  a  greater  "national" 
activity.  This  activity  is  real,  but  the  question  is  what 
is  its  origin,  what  is  likely  to  be  its  duration.  The  chances 
are  that  the  present  phenomena  of  national  expansion  and 
of  nationalistic  concentration  fall  under  the  general  "  law  " 
that  "  nationalism,"  national  spirit,  is  manifested  only 
when  nationality  is  menaced.  The  long  agony  of  the 
several  States — which  are  being  gradually  throttled  by 
the  bonds  of  international  finance  and  of  the  labour 
conditions  that  have  everywhere  engendered  class-war, 
and  which  are  being  crushed  into  a  monotonous  uniformity 
by  the  combined  pressure  of  all  the  forces  that  make  for 
the  creation  of  a  standard  "  minimum  man,"2  the  product 

1  The  Slav  ingredients  in  the  crucible  of  the  Austro-Hungarian 
Empire  are  tending,   by  natural  affinity,   to  amalgamate.     A   con- 
spicuous instance  of  this  phenomenon  is  the  nationalistic  agitation 
among  the  Rumanians  of  Transylvania.     Reaction  against  Magyar 
domination  is  creating  a  national  self -consciousness  among  the  popula- 
tion of  Rumanian  race  on  both  sides  of  the  Carpathians.     The  conse- 
quences on  the  balance  of  power  in  Europe  are  important.     (Cf .  The 
Hapsburg  Monarchy,  by  Wickham  Steed,  pp.  287,  288.) 

2  See  The  Future  of  England,  by  the  Hon.  George  Peel.     Macmillan, 
1911. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    13 

of  a  virtually  identical  set  of  educative  influences  in  the 
several  countries — this  agony  might  be,  and  probably  will 
be,  prolonged  by  a  series  of  wars  which  will  aggravate  the 
present  temporary  tendency  of  each  State  to  seek  to  pre- 
serve its  national  traditions,  and  its  national  integrity; 
but,  from  any  comprehensive  point  of  view,  this  revival 
of  nationalism  the  world  over  is  only  the  death-throe  of 
the  principle  of  nationality.  It  is  a  magnificent  reaction,  a 
pathetic  convulsion  of  the  principle  of  life,  in  each  of  these 
separate  organisms,  calculated,  biologically  speaking,  to 
retard  the  disintegration  with  which  they  are  menaced  in  a 
hostile  environment.  It  is  no  doubt  the  drift  of  the  time, 
but  the  drift  of  only  a  very  brief  instant  of  time;  and  it 
signifies,  in  reality,  a  general  tendency  of  just  the  opposite 
character:  national  spirit  is  manifested  only  when  nation- 
ality is  menaced.1 


This  is  an  appreciation,  the  accuracy  of  which  it  is  obvi- 
ously impossible  to  prove.  That  some  such  conclusion 
may  be  rendered  plausible  will,  however,  probably  be 
suggested  by  the  considerations,  based  on  concrete  facts, 
to  be  developed  later  on.  But  the  new  economic  facts 
that  are  becoming — that,  indeed,  have  already  become — 
such  a  predominant  element  in  determining  the  nature 
of  world  civilization,  are  not,  after  all,  exercising  their 
influence  in  a  void.  They  are  acting  on  governments,  com- 
munities, administrations  that  possess  definite  political 
and  social  characteristics.  They  are  altering  the  whole 
conception  of  the  State,  and  they  are  making  breaches  in 

1  The  sentiment  of  a  German  Vaterland,  reborn  during  the  wars  of 
the  Revolution  and  the  Empire,  is  kept  alive  to-day  by  the  fear  of  the 
French  revanche  and  of  Russian  predomination.  The  principle  here 
formulated,  and  typically  illustrated  by  the  case  of  Germany,  can  be 
easily  verified,  negatively  as  well  as  positively,  throughout  the  world. 


14  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

frontiers;  but  these  frontiers  are  boundaries  fixed  by 
treaty,  and  maintained  superficially  intact  by  military 
force,  or  by  the  still  powerful  prestige  of  international 
convention. 

Before  displaying  one's  little  collection  of  economic 
facts,  all  belonging  to  a  class  calculated  to  cosmopoli- 
tanize  the  still  very  appreciably  differentiated  rival 
nations  and  peoples,1  it  will  be  well  to  review  the  present 
political  and  social  condition  of  such  States  as  are  most 
exposed  to  these  economic  ravages.  The  social  state  of 
the  Europe  and  the  United  States  of  to-day  constitutes  a 
kind  of  definite  pattern  woven  in  political  looms.  But 
the  pattern  is  being  rapidly  overlaid  by  fresh  designs, 
and  no  time  should  be  lost  if  the  spectator  would  con- 
template it  approximately  as  it  first  came  from  the  hands 
of  its  famous  artisans.  Before  illustrating  by  typical 
instances,  and  with  some  detail,  the  working  of  the  occult 
forces  that,  relentlessly  destroying  the  society  in  which 
we  were  born,  are  now  making  over  the  world  anew,  it 
will  be  useful  to  cast  a  rapid  glance  at  the  last  few  years 
of  the  political  history  of  certain  of  the  Powers.  It  is 
important  to  note  the  present  political  and  social  aspects 
of  the  picture  on  which  the  new  economic  influences  are 
now  wreaking  their  indelible  and  curious  work. 

VI 

The  United  States  may  properly,  perhaps,  be  dealt  with 
before  any  of  the  European  Powers,  as  being  apparently 
a  more  isolated  case ;  though  this  isolation,  as  the  merest 
scrutiny  shows,  is  only  a  "  mirage  of  the  map,"  and  the 
next  few  years,  following  upon  the  opening  of  the  Panama 
Canal,  will  reveal  the  immense  increase,  during  less  than 
*  See  Book  HI. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    15 

the  last  quarter  of  a  century,  of  the  number  of  purely 
North  American  factors  in  the  total  data  now  determin- 
ing, not  only  the  policy  of  the  conscious  nations,  but  the 
well-being,  or  the  adversity,  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
earth  as  a  whole.  Rear-Admiral  Mahan,  who,  with 
Mr.  Chamberlain,  has  been  one  of  the  seminal  minds  of 
the  last  generation,  relates  in  his  brilliantly  suggestive 
essay,  "  The  Interest  of  America  in  International  Con- 
ditions," that  not  so  very  long  ago  a  shrewd  old  Member 
of  Congress  advised  a  newly-elected  colleague  "to  avoid 
service  on  a  fancy  Committee  like  that  of  Foreign  Affairs 
if  he  wished  to  retain  his  hold  upon  his  constituents, 
because  they  cared  nothing  about  international  ques- 
tions." It  is  no  longer  witty  even  for  the  average  voter 
in  America  to  express  such  an  opinion  as  this.  Every 
American  citizen  is  vaguely  aware  that  the  expansion  of 
world  trade  has  slowly  altered  the  bearings  of  the  famous 
Doctrine  of  Monroe,  making  of  this  rapidly  rusting 
weapon,  forged  solely  for  defensive  purposes,  an  inter- 
mittently flashing  effective  instrument  of  imperialism. 

The  chain  of  logical  sequence  in  the  rise  of  American 
national  power  has  been  clearly  defined  by  the  philosopher 
of  Anglo-Saxon  Sea-Power:  the  birth  of  industry,  the 
need  for  markets,  the  demand  for  control  of  the  highways 
leading  to  them  by  means  of  a  navy,  and  the  consequent 
necessity  of  establishing  naval  bases.  Thus  a  certain 
American  spread-eagleism  had  the  same  cause  as  the 
British  political  egoism  that  gave  rise  in  France  to  the 
legend  of  perfide  Albion,  and  as  the  present  aggressiveness 
of  a  Germany  bent  on  establishing  her  preponderance 
in  all  the  continents  and  on  every  sea.  It  is  by  the  force 
of  things  that  the  United  States  has  evolved  two  cardinal 
policies:  a  hitherto  practically  effective  "Monroe  Doc- 
trine," and  also  a  less  successful  principle,  that  of  "k  The 


10  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Open  Door."  Non-interference  with  European  inter- 
national relations  has  ceased  to  be  possible  for  that 
Power,  owing  to  its  own  imperial  initiatives,  to  the  birth 
of  a  real  British  Empire,  and  to  the  parallel  rise  of  German 
and  Japanese  aspirations  in  the  Pacific.  And  the  force 
of  things,  the  force  of  economic  things,  may  ultimately 
cause  the  United  States  to  be  brought  to  bay  by  rival 
Powers  summoning  her,  if  not  to  repudiate  the  first  of 
her  cardinal  policies,  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  at  least  so  to 
readjust  it  as  to  bring  it  into  harmony  with  the  new 
interests  of  those  Powers.1  If  the  United  States  Senate 
had  sanctioned  such  a  treaty  of  Arbitration  as  was  pro- 
posed in  191 1  by  President  Taft  to  the  British  and  French 
ambassadors  at  Washington,  their  Governments,  as  well 
as  those  of  Germany  and  Japan  and  the  South  American 
States,  might  easily  one  day  raise  "  justiciable  "  ques- 
tions, with  regard  to  which  American  "  national  honour  " 
could  not  temporize.  The  points  to  be  insisted  on  for 
the  moment  are  that  the  United  States  has  become  a 
World-Power,  and  that  in  becoming  members  of  a  World- 
Power  the  Americans  have  been  so  astonishingly  trans- 
formed that  even  one  who  has  been  absent  from  their 
shores  for  a  period  of  only  twenty  years  must  inevitably, 
upon  his  return,  find  his  compatriots  almost  unrecog- 
nizable. 

An  Englishman  returning  to  London  after  so  long  a 
period,  from  a  sojourn  in  Montreal,  New  York,  or  Seattle ; 
a  Frenchman  coming  back  to  Paris  after  the  same  length 
of  time  passed  in  Canada  or  in  the  United  States,  would 
not  find  the  familiar  aspects  of  his  home  essentially 
altered.  There  is  still  in  London  "  the  same  old  crush 
at  the  corner  of  Fenchurch  Street  "  as  when  Matthew 
Arnold  wrote  the  preface  to  his  Essays  in  Criticism.  And 
1  See  pp.  354-374. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    17 

the  Boulevards  are  still  the  axis  round  whose  polished 
surface  spins  the  bright  Parisian  world.  The  English 
ancestral  domains,  and  the  French  national  parks,  are 
still,  in  spite  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George  and  of  the  French 
Radicals — in  spite  of  the  economic  conditions  that  are 
altering  the  whole  content  of  the  human  consciousness — • 
inhabited  and  frequented  by  men  and  women  who  are 
thinking  and  feeling  in  the  same  British  or  Gallic  fashion 
in  which  they  felt  and  thought  a  quarter  of  a  century 
ago.  In  the  United  States,  on  the  contrary,  so  numerous 
have  been  the  changes  within  the  period  reaching  from 
1890  to  1910  that  they  have  cumulatively  resulted  in 
differentiating  the  America  of  to-day  from  the  America 
of  the  earlier  date  by  a  real  and  impressive  alteration  in 
quality  and  in  kind.  Not  merely  the  surfaces  of  tilings 
have  changed:  the  mental  and  the  moral  traits  of  the 
American  people  have  seemed  to  alter.  It  is  obvious, 
however,  that  this  latter  change  is  partially  an  illusion. 
The  American  of  to-day,  who  was  "  in  being  "  in  the 
America  of  twenty  years  ago,  is  only  developing,  with 
astounding  rapidity,  and  in  an  unexpected  variety  of 
ways,  the  traditional  American  characteristics.  But 
when  the  foreigner,  fresh  come  to  the  New  World,  or 
the  exile  who  returns  to  it  after  a  long  lapse  of  time,  is 
suddenly  confronted  with  the  bewildering  bulk  of  these 
transformations,  both  superficial  and  moral,  he  cannot 
but  contemplate  the  spectacle  with  wonder. 

This  impression  of  astonishment  is  due  not  merely  to  the 
feeling  of  being  dwarfed  by  the  "  sky-scraper." 

The  "  sky-scraper  "  is  as  natural  and  as  inevitable  a 
product  of  the  human  effort  to  adapt  itself  to  the  pro- 
visional environment,  it  is  as  logical  a  consequence  of  the 
interplay  of  the  social,  geographic  and  economic  condi- 
tions of  civilization  on  Manhattan  Island — and  even  now 


18  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

in  other  characteristic  centres  of  American  life — as  was 
its  early  model  at  Lyons,  where  the  houses,  constructed 
on  a  tongue  of  land  hemmed  in  between  the  Saone  and  the 
Rhone,  reach  heights  for  the  most  part  unknown  in  Paris  ; 
as  was  the  Roman  amphitheatre,  rising  from  the  broad 
expanse  of  flat  meadow-lands,  or  the  Greco-Roman 
theatre,  imbedded  in  a  lull-side,  with  the  convex  of  its 
tiers  of  seats  backed  against  the  afternoon  sun.  No 
other  form  of  architectural  expression  was  so  beautifully 
suited  at  once  to  the  topography  of  the  spot  and  to  the 
social  purposes  of  the  structure.  And  one  of  the  happier 
consequences  of  the  combination  of  the  steel  framework 
and  of  the  "  elevator,"  is  that  New  York  of  to-day  among 
the  great  cities  is  virtually  the  only  one  where  you  can  see 
the  stars. 

The  insolence  of  its  Shinar  towers  is  a  constant  affront 
to  the  gods.  But  the  idealism  of  American  life — for 
idealism  is  the  most  characteristic  note  of  the  American 
character — is  expressed  in  these  structures  as  completely 
as  is  the  practical  energy  of  this  people,  whose  preoccupa- 
tion with  a  certain  class  of  fact,  whose  inevitable  interest 
in  the  tangible  or  visible  thing,  has  so  often  led  the 
foreigner  to  describe  them  as  "  material."  It  is  a  spec- 
tacle as  disconcerting  as  it  is  exhilarating  to  behold  a 
whole  nation  rushing  in  where  angels  fear  to  tread.  The 
ignoring  of  obstacles,  the  shattering  of  conventions,  the 
faith  in  individual  action,  the  callous  neglect  of  all  those 
inhibitions  which  arrest  wild  impulse,  these  are  traits  of 
character  which  no  one  but  an  Athenian  of  the  fourth 
century,  an  Italian  of  the  Renaissance — or  a  man  of  their 
temperament — would  have  understood. 

The  electoral  period  of  1910  brought  to  the  surface, 
even  for  the  detached  observer,  cumulative  illustration, 
and  in  fact  definitive  proof,  of  the  disconcerting  mixture  of 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    19 

idealism  and  practical  sense  in  the  American  people ;  and 
the  Presidential  campaign  of  1 912  gave  added  confirmation 
of  the  impressions  that  were  to  be  gathered  two  years 
previously.  The  founders  of  American  society  were  ideal- 
istic even  unto  mysticism,  but  they  were  practical  and 
hard-headed  even  to  sharpness,  "  cuteness  "  and  canni- 
ness.  Dr.  Henry  van  Dyke,  in  his  excellent  lectures  on 
The  Spirit  of  America,  affirms  that  the  blended  strains  of 
blood  which  made  the  American  people  in  the  beginning 
are  still  the  dominant  factors  in  the  American  people 
of  to-day."  And  this  intellectual  and  spiritual  heredity 
has  been  communicated  to  millions  of  immigrants  from 
all  parts  of  the  world.  Throughout  the  electoral  period 
of  October  and  November,  1910,  and  again  of  1912,  the 
spectacle  was  one  which  resembled  nothing  which  has 
ever  taken  place  elsewhere.  It  revealed  the  existence, 
after  all,  of  a  national  spirit,  capable  of  ultimately  com- 
pleting the  work  of  unification,1  which  even  the  Civil  War, 

1  The  work  of  unification  will  be  a  long  effort  in  "  constructive 
nationalism."  It  is  not  merely  "  the  problem  of  the  preservation  of  the 
national  resources  "  of  the  United  States,  which  has  been  sketched  out 
by  Mr.  Roosevelt  in  his  article  on  "  The  Pioneer  Spirit  and  American 
Problems"  (The  Outlook,  September  10,  1910),  and  which  Mr.  Frank 
Buffington  Vrooman  analyzed  brilliantly  in  his  lecture  delivered  to  the 
Oxford  School  of  Geography  on  March  8,  1909  (of.  "  Theodore  Roose- 
velt :  Dynamic  Geographer."  Henry  Frowde,  Oxford  University  Press). 
[On  April  5, 1913,  Mr.  Roosevelt  published  in  The  Outlook  an  article  on 
"  The  Ohio  Floods,"  in  which  he  said:  "  The  treating  of  the  Mississippi 
watershed  as  a  unit  from  the  mouths  of  streams  to  their  sources  will 
mean  the  co-ordination  of  the  work  of  the  Federal  Engineers,  of  the 
Reclamation  Service,  of  the  Forestry  Bureau  of  the  Division  of  Soils,  of 
the  Geodetic  Survey,  of  the  Mississippi  River  Commission,  and  of  the 
National  effort  to  turn  floods  into  power,  and  regions  into  gardens,  and 
marshes  into  farms.  All  this  might  be  done  by  one  Act  of  the  Federal 
Congress."]  It  is  the  achievement  of  a  national  policy,  and  a  national 
responsibility,  based  on  a  national  unity.  It  is  such  adjustment  of 
State  "  rights"  to  National  interests  as  will  transfer  full  responsibility 
to  Washington  in  the  treatment  of  such  grave  matters  as  Californian 


20 

supplemented  by  the  vast  material  co-ordinating  forces  of 
our  time — railways,  electricity,  the  printing-press — had  not 
yet  sufficed  to  achieve. 

A  genuine  passion  for  reform ;  a  desire — oh,  sometimes 
a  very  exorbitant  and  fanatical  desire — to  make  social 
relations  and  civic  ideals  square  with  a  crude  notion  of 
justice  and  fair  play;  a  recognition  of  the  fact  that  the 
old  confidence  in  the  inevitable  success  and  the  obvious 
superiority  of  the  American  democracy  was  stupid  and 
childish,  and  must  give  way  before  a  systematic  endeavour 
to  work  out  a  social  ideal  on  a  rational  basis ;  the  rejection 

legislation  concerning  Japanese  immigration.  Again,  many  of  the 
"  rights  "  of  the  several  States  must  be  amalgamated  in  a  general  "  law 
of  the  land"  rendering  impossible,  for  instance,  such  scandalous 
anomalies  as  the  fact  of  the  continued  existence  of  defaulting  American 
States  over  which  the  central  Administration  has  only  inadequate 
control.  In  the  autumn  of  1912  North  Carolina,  which  has  defaulted 
obligations  amounting  to  over  $12,000,000,  appealed  for  a  loan  of 
$550,000  based  on  the  credit  of  the  State.  Mississippi  also,  notwith- 
standing her  repudiated  debt  of  $7,000,000,  is  trying  to  borrow.  A 
memorandum  of  the  British  Council  of  Foreign  Bondholders  recently 
recalled  that  the  official  Controller  of  Savings  Banks  in  the  United 
States  had  taken  steps  to  compel  certain  of  the  banks  to  sell  their 
holdings  of  bonds  of  some  of  the  Southern  States,  as,  although  such 
bonds  were  being  regularly  paid,  the  Savings  Bank  Law  prohibits 
investment  by  the  banks  in  securities  of  States  which  are  in  default 
on  previously  contracted  obligations.  The  British  Council  of  Foreign 
Bondholders  expresses  its  surprise  that  prosperous  and  wealthy  com- 
munities should  persist  in  sheer  refusal  to  enter  into  a  reasonable 
arrangement  with  the  holders  of  their  defaulted  obligations.  They 
recommend  an  uncompromising  opposition  to  the  attempts  of  these 
States  to  obtain  new  money.  At  present  the  only  two  countries  in  the 
world  in  default,  outside  of  the  Southern  States  of  the  American  Union, 
are  Guatemala  and  Honduras.  Constructive  statesmanship  in  the 
United  States  would  find  some  way  to  render  it  no  longer  possible  for  a 
paper  like  the  London  Times  to  comment  as  follows  on  the  present 
situation:  "  Unless  the  American  States  take  prompt  steps  to  remedy 
the  present  regrettable  state  of  affairs  it  would  appear  probable  that 
they  will  incur  the  unenviable  distinction  of  being  the  only  communities 
barred  from  the  money  markets  of  the  world." 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    21 

of  the  former  insolent  attitude  of  laisser-aller,  of  devil- 
we-care  fatuousness,  for  the  adoption  of  strenuous  and 
methodical  tactics  aiming  at  the  organization  of  a  really 
democratic  existence,  in  which  the  useful  impetus  of 
characteristic  American  individualism,  or  the  sacrosanct 
principle  of  State  rights,  would  be  curbed  only  in  so  far 
as  individualism  and  State  Autonomy  injured  the  in- 
terests of  the  vast  community  at  large — all  these  signs 
of  an  awakened  national  spirit,  these  preoccupations  of 
practical  reform  which  had  moralized  politics,  and  which 
were  peculiar  to  no  political  party,  but  which  were  as 
much  the  key-note  in  1910  of  the  speeches  of  the  Demo- 
cratic candidate  for  governor  of  New  Jersey  (destined  to 
be  President  of  the  United  States)  as  they  were  the  war- 
cry  of  1912  of  the  Nimrod  of  the  Progressist  party,  be- 
spoke a  transformation  in  American  conditions  which 
marked  only  a  newer  and  more  potent  phase  of  the  earlier 
high-minded  sense  of  obligation  to  subordinate  life  to  a 
moral  ideal.  The  period  of  what  the  Canadians  of  the 
West  call  "  making  good,"  is  ended,  and  the  American 
population  is  now  developing  a  critical  spirit  as  to  the 
quality  of  the  results  of  their  civilization.  It  is  taking  to 
politics  with  a  "  strenuousness  "  that  has  an  ethical 
fervour.  The  legitimacy  or  the  illegitimacy  of  the 
triumphs  of  a  rampant  individualism — the  literally  im- 
perial achievements  of  the  unmolested  money-getters 
who  have  built  the  railways  and  founded  the  corpora- 
tions of  the  United  States;  the  problems  of  national 
economic  conservation;  the  present  position  and  the 
future  of  American  women ;  the  moral  aspects  of  tariff 
bills  or  of  banking  legislation :  such  subjects  as  these  are 
the  recurrent  themes  of  the  great  popular  magazines  and 
reviews  which  are  read  by  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
American  citizens  and  gibbering  candidates  for  American 


22  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

citizenship.  This  last  fact  is  in  itself  extraordinarily 
impressive. 

The  sense  of  a  moral  purpose,  constantly  revealed  by 
the  articles  in  the  American  magazines,  is  a  fact  classing 
itself  immediately  with  the  general  impression  left  by  the 
whole  spectacle  of  American  life.  It  is  one  with  the  cases 
of  advertised  philanthropy  on  the  part  of  the  plutocrats ; 
one  with  the  titles  of  the  books  published  by  the  presidents 
of  the  colleges ;  one  with  the  inspiration  of  the  sermons  in 
the  churches,  and  one  with  the  texture  of  the  various 
planks  in  the  political  platforms.  Save  for  the  cult  of 
sport — and,  after  all,  why  exclude  this  Hellenic  passion 
from  the  category  of  moral  impulses  ? — no  activity  is  any 
longer  conceivable  in  America  except  in  relation  to  the 
whole  problem  of  the  national  interest  and  of  national 
improvement.  Heedless  individualism,  inspired  by  the 
merely  selfish  instinct  of  getting  rich,  or  of  being  a  success 
without  thought  of  one's  neighbour,  is  no  longer  American. 
The  theory  of  "  equal  rights  "  has  been  tried  and  found 
wanting.  The  tradition  of  that  persistent  Jeffersonian 
principle  is  being  hopelessly  demolished  by  the  lessons 
which  Americans  of  the  last  generation  have  drawn  from 
their  political  and  economic  experience.  Everything  now 
to  be  seen,  everything  to  be  read,  everything  heard  in 
America,  leads  the  observer  to  believe  that  American 
society  is  already  becoming  what  Mr.  Croly,  in  his  remark- 
able book,  The  Promise  of  American  Life,  declares  that  it 
must  become,  short  of  utter  failure.  It  is  becoming  a 
democracy  of  selected  individuals,  who  are  obliged  constantly 
10  justify  their  selection.  It  is  no  longer,  as  Matthew 
Arnold  called  it,  the  home  of  das  Gemeine.  Its  members 
are  becoming  united  in  a  sense  of  joint  responsibility  for 
the  success  of  their  political  and  social  ideal. 

A  Bossuet,  rhetorically  falsifying  history  in  conformity 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    23 

with  an  a  priori  principle  of  pre-established  harmony, 
might  be  tempted  grandiloquently  to  recall  that  the 
north  and  south  axis  of  the  planet  is  that  of  the  five  great 
commercial  and  ethnic  highways  of  world-civilization: 
the  Canal  of  Panama,  the  Suez  Canal,  the  Nile  Valley, 
the  valley  of  the  Rhone,  and  Manhattan  Island,  and  to 
find  a  "  providential  "  fitness  in  the  fact  that  a  self-con- 
scious people,  with  a  common  political  and  social  ideal, 
should  be  developed  round  each  of  these  highways.  But 
he  would  roll  out  anathema  at  one  of  the  most  character- 
istic aspects  of  American  life,  the  universal  interest  in 
sport,  the  passion  for  play.  Autumn  in  America  to-day  is, 
indeed,  a  season  in  which  not  merely  the  youth,  who  are 
donning  the  toga  virilis,  and  their  beautiful  partners,  but 
men  and  women  of  all  ages,  abandon  themselves  to 
strenuous  amusements.  Join  the  wonderful  crowds  who 
assemble  in  their  several  amphitheatres,  round  the  football 
field,  from  Andover  Hill,  by  way  of  New  Haven  and 
Cambridge,  to  West  Point.  It  is  an  imperial  spectacle, 
and  the  spectator  will  have  the  sensations  of  a  patrician. 
A  quarter  of  a  century  ago  the  great  American  public 
cared  little  for  the  fate  of  a  university  team  pitted  against 
its  rival.  In  America  to-day  the  entire  community  par- 
ticipates in  the  tense  curiosity  with  which  the  college 
graduates  hasten,  with  their  womenkind,  to  the  tourna- 
ment fields  to  see  the  youth — who  are  more  like  gladiators 
than  like  knights — do  battle,  and  the  newspapers  of  the 
continent,  in  the  small  as  in  the  great  towns,  devote  as 
much  space  to  the  games  as  they  do  to  home  politics, 
and  infinitely  more  than  they  do  to  foreign  affairs.  That 
thirty  thousand  or  forty  thousand  people,  among  those 
who  are  doing  all  the  serious  things  in  the  society  of  their 
time,  should  scramble  for  the  privilege  of  watching  a 
football  game,  that  the  fifty  thousand  others  who  are 


excluded  from  the  privilege,  more  or  less  by  chance,  should 
envy  them  their  good  fortune,  and  that  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  others  should  be  waiting  at  nightfall,  at  the 
ends  of  the  telegraph  wires  and  in  front  of  the  bulletins 
posted  up  by  the  newspapers,  to  learn  the  result  of  a  battle 
lasting  ninety  minutes ;  this  is  a  fact  which  Europe  could 
not  understand,  but  of  which  it  has  perhaps  gained  an 
inkling,  since  the  American  victories  in  the  Olympic 
Games  of  1912  at  Stockholm.  It  is  a  fact  of  a  Pindaric 
quality,  and  one  which  throws  a  beautiful  light  on  the 
growth  of  the  hero-cult  in  the  civilization  of  Greece. 
America  has  not  yet  a  national  poet  like  Pindar,  capable 
of  celebrating  the  glory  of  a  Boston,  or  a  Duluth,  or  a 
New  York,  or  a  Richmond,  or  a  Chicago  boy,  in  verses 
to  the  glory  of  these  several  cities,  but  it  already  has  the 
pretext  and  the  incentive  for  a  Pindar;  and  when  such 
a  writer  is  born  he  will  say  in  English,  as  his  predecessor 
said  in  Greek:  "  Best  of  physicians  for  a  man's  accom- 
plished toil  is  festive  joy." 

At  Lenox,  where  the  rich  families  of  New  York  have 
created  vast  domains  around  their  country  houses,  exactly 
as  the  rich  Roman  and  Gallo-Roman  colonists  of  the  Bur- 
gundian  highlands,  by  natural  capillary  advance  up  the 
Rhone  valley,  built  in  a  wilderness  villas  crammed  with 
the  art  treasures  of  Greece  or  of  the  home-country — on 
Long  Island,  on  the  Connecticut  slopes,  in  the  hinterland 
of  the  Boston  suburbs,  or  at  Morristown,  in  New  Jersey, 
where,  in  an  atmosphere  of  admirable  history,  and  in  a 
region  of  beautiful  hills  and  poetic  waters,  still  other 
favourites  of  American  fortune  have  organized  a  life  warm 
with  a  rich  comfort  which  only  England's  aristocracy  had 
anticipated;  the  impression  left  upon  the  visitor  is  of 
another  kind.  It  is  distinctly  that  which  Signer  Ferrero, 
the  historian  of  Rome,  has  chronicled  in  his  notes  on 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    25 

American  society.  The  immense  extension  of  the  class 
which  possesses  the  money  to  buy  leisure,  and  enough 
money  to  buy  the  leisure  to  be  wise — even  if  all  of  them 
be  not  yet  wise  enough  to  buy  that  kind  of  leisure — is  a 
new  fact  which  illustrates  once  more  how  useful  the 
economic  key  may  be  to  open  the  problems  set  by  history. 
And  these  citizens,  who  can  now  afford  to  play,  are  being 
imitated  by  the  entire  people,  all  of  whom  are  "  making 
money,"  or  who  are  somehow  enjoying  the  mysterious 
privilege  of  economic  credit. 

A  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  most  Americans  doubted 
whether  they  had  a  right  to  play.  None  thought  it 
"  moral  "  to  play  long.  This  feeling  was  part  and  parcel 
of  the  emotion  with  which  they  clung  to  the  validity  of 
the  universally  disseminated  eleventh  commandment : 
Thou  shalt  not  like.  Of  that  commandment  not  a  shred 
remains.  The  Americans  have  issued  forth  from  the 
dank  Puritanism  of  their  old-time  places  of  worship  and 
of  study.  They  have  come  out  into  the  open.  They 
have  treated  their  moral  rheumatism  by  a  bath  of  sun- 
light. They  are  marching  to  the  step  of  an  imperial 
movement,  and  they  are  rapidly  substituting  for  the  old 
precepts  a  moral  philosophy  as  realistic,  as  "  pragmatic," 
as  that  which  was  born  in  the  Greek  palaestra,  and  which 
a  little  effort  of  mysticism  might  easily  enhance — and  no 
doubt  will — with  all  the  virtues  of  the  famous  kaloka- 
gathos.1  At  present  America  has  only  reached  the  stage 
of  calisthenics.  With  their  emancipation  from  the  book, 

1  The  Catholic  University  of  America  has  conferred  on  Mr.  J.  Pier- 
pont  Morgan  a  unique  degree:  "Patron  of  Fine  Arts  and  Letters." 
(AT.  Y.  Herald,  January  3,  1913.)  "  Un  des  meilleurs  esprits  du  siecle 
raisonnable,  1'aimable  Bernier,  ecrivit  un  jour  a  Saint- FJvremont : 
'  C'est  un  grand  peche  que  de  se  priver  d'un  plaisir.'  Et  ce  seul 
propos  suffirait  a  decouvrir  les  progres  des  intelligences  en  Europe." 
(La  Revolte  de$  Anges,  by  Anatole  France.  Calmann-Levy,  p.  243.) 


26  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

the  Americans  are,  alas,  recklessly  shattering  the  lan- 
guage, inventing  new  idioms,  sharpening  certain  words, 
or  destroying  others;  but  they  are,  meanwhile,  evolving 
in  the  open  a  physical  type  of  man  and  woman  which  has 
already  considerably  altered  the  appearance  of  the  race. 

Dr.  van  Dyke,  in  the  book  already  cited,  denies  the 
truth  of  the  contention  tha,t  any  general  and  fundamental 
change  has  taken  place  in  the  human  type  in  America. 
But  that  very  trait  of  Americans,  the  expressions  of  which 
he  analyses  so  suggestively,  their  spirit  of  self-reliance—- 
the characteristic  which  Professor  Miinsterberg  calls  the 
"  spirit  of  self -direction  " — has  unquestionably  given  to 
the  male  and  female  face  a  look  which  distinguishes  it  from 
the  expression  of  the  British,  French,  or  German,  face, 
and  which  climatic  or  other  external  causes  would  not 
have  sufficed  to  induce.  The  British,  Dutch,  or  Irish 
animal,  homo,  transplanted  to  America,  might,  perhaps, 
have  become  what  Quatrefages  declared  he  was  becoming, 
a  species  of  man  resembling  the  North  American  Indian, 
if  it  had  not  been  for  the  play  of  moral  and  economic 
factors  which  have  saved  him  from  that  degeneracy. 

At  all  events,  it  is  just  because  these  handsomer  and 
healthier  Americans  of  the  present  generation  are  the 
descendants  of  men  and  women  who  had  a  peculiar  en- 
dowment of  energy,  and  a  special  training  that  was  pro- 
ductive of  real  will-power;  it  is,  in  a  word,  just  because 
they  have  been  able  to  preserve  their  ''''forms  of  thought," 
that  they  have  been  able  to  expand  with  such  abounding 
elasticity,  and  such  a  steady,  and  often  insolent,  optimism, 
within  the  vast  limits  of  their  continent,  and  that,  further- 
more, now  those  limits  have  been  reached,  they  have  been 
able  to  develop  the  sanely  sceptical  attitude  as  regards  the 
quality  of  their  achievements,  and  the  unflinching  resolve 
to  justify  their  belief  in  themselves,  which  are  bound  to 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    27 

strike  any  observer  as  characteristic  of  American  society 
to-day.  The  horizon  of  a  religious  mind  is  not  confined 
within  the  meridians  traced  on  the  surface  of  the  earth. 
For  many  generations  the  Americans  were  profoundly  re- 
ligious, and  their  perspectives  reached  outward  into  spaces 
the  reality  of  which  was  as  characteristic  as  their  remote- 
ness. The  Americans  of  to-day  are  less  religious,  not- 
withstanding the  evidence  afforded  by  the  statistics  of 
church-membership.  But  the  habit  that  they  have 
acquired,  of  taking  the  idealistic,  mystical,  religious,  far- 
view  of  human  actions,  their  utter  failure  to  comprehend 
the  narrow  terre-d-terre  point  of  view,  remains  with  them 
as  a  "  form  "  of  thought,  which  has  been  singularly  and 
happily  adjusted  to  the  purely  geographical  conditions 
of  their  national  expansion.  An  energy  and  a  will  to 
organize  American  society  on  a  national  basis,  is  now  being 
manifested  in  a  spirit  hostile  to  some  of  the  most  sacred 
political  and  social  traditions  of  the  people  of  the  independent 
States.  This  is  the  impressive  implication  of  the  whole 
wondrous  spectacle  of  modern  America. 

Now,  this  pervasive  domestic  unrest,  the  internal  trans- 
formations, have  uniformly  escaped  the  notice  of  the 
foreign  observer,  or,  when  he  has  obtained  some  inkling 
of  them,  he  has  usually  misinterpreted  them.  The  great 
fact,  however,  which  has  impressed  itself  upon  him  with 
extraordinary  lucidity  is  that  the  United  States  has 
become  a  World-Power,  and  he  is  taking  this  fact  into 
his  calculations  to  a  degree  that  is  unsuspected  by  the 
average  American,  and  is  sufficiently  appreciated  only  by 
certain  members  of  the  Senatorial  Committee  for  Foreign 
Affairs.  When,  in  1909,  ex-President  Roosevelt,  coming 
up  out  of  Africa,  made  his  tour  of  the  European  continent, 
the  gravest  exponent  of  British  public  opinion  welcomed 
him  in  language  which  it  is  pertinent  to  recall.  The 


28 

spectacle  of  the  unfailing  enthusiasm  excited  by  Theodore 
Roosevelt,  as  he  passed  from  country  to  country,  was 
compared  to  the  fervour  aroused  by  Garibaldi,  when  his 
romantic  exploits  were  still  fresh  in  men's  minds,  and  his 
red  shirt  was  the  symbol  of  struggling  causes.  "There 
has  been  nothing  like  it  in  Europe  since  the  days  of  Peter 
the  Hermit,"  said  The  Times  ;  and  this  great  organ  of 
British  feeling  undertook  to  account  for  the  mystery  of 
a  phenomenon  which  the  mere  psychology  of  crowds  is 
admittedly  inadequate  to  explain.  The  reason  why 
Mr.  Roosevelt's  progress  in  Europe  was  such  as  the 
greatest  monarchs  have  not  always  enjoyed,  was  taken 
to  be  the  fact  that  the  substance  of  all  his  speeches  was 
one  needful  and  welcome.  Mr.  Roosevelt  came  to  a 
Europe  which  was  sick  and  very  weary  of  talk,  perpetual 
talk,  about  rights ;  and  it  listened  with  avidity  and  hope 
to  a  man  who  spoke  of  duties,  and  spoke  of  them  plainly 
and  emphatically.  The  opportuneness  of  Mr.  Roosevelt's 
message  is  the  explanation  which  was  given  of  the 
astonishing  success  of  his  odyssey.  There  is  no  reason 
for  rejecting  this  version  of  the  matter;  but  it  should 
be  borne  in  mind  that  Mr.  Roosevelt's  message  was  an 
"  American  "  message,  and  that  the  importance  ascribed 
to  his  utterances  and,  in  fact,  his  very  presence  in  Europe, 
was  due  to  the  significance  attributed  to-day  by  the  rest 
of  the  world  to  any  characteristic  American  demonstra- 
tion. In  order  to  illustrate  this  truth  one  single  episode 
of  Mr.  Roosevelt's  journey  suffices — his  visit  to  France. 
The  great  impression  left  by  Mr.  Roosevelt  in  France 
could  not  have  been  made  if  he  had  not  arrived  there 
with  a  singular  prestige.  To  Europe  he  was  a  convenient 
symbol  of  American  world-power ;  and  France,  in  particu- 
lar, had  just  had  excellent  reasons  for  congratulating  her- 
self on  having  greeted  Franklin  with  sympathy  a  century 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    29 

and  a  half  ago,  and  for  having  aided  the  British  colonies 
beyond  the  Atlantic  to  achieve  their  independence.  At 
Algeciras  she  reaped  the  reward  for  her  attitude  during 
the  Anglo-American  difficulties  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
At  Algeciras  the  conciliatory  intervention  of  President 
Roosevelt,  by  thwarting  the  German  Emperor's  efforts 
to  destroy  the  diplomatic  block  which  gave  France  a  firm 
stand  in  the  defence  of  her  Moroccan  interests,  did  more 
than  save  that  country  from  a  humiliation  which  might 
have  led  to  a  European  war.  It  confirmed  again  a  fact 
which  Continental  Europe  had  learned  during  the 
Spanish- American  War,  but  which,  if  it  had  not  been  for 
Mr.  Roosevelt's  conspicuous  personality,  it  might  easily 
have  forgotten — the  fact  that  the  United  States  existed, 
and  that  the  Monroe  Doctrine  did  not  necessarily  imply 
that  the  American  Government  ignored  the  presence  of 
other  Powers  on  this  planet.  Mr.  Roosevelt,  who  had 
been  a  soldier  in  Cuba,  and  an  official  of  the  Navy  Depart- 
ment, had  also  been  the  foremost  promoter  of  arbitration 
among  the  nations.  At  The  Hague,  at  Algeciras,  and  at 
Portsmouth,  he  proved  to  Europe  that  America  was  no 
mere  cartographic  figment.  For  France,  as  for  the  rest 
of  the  European  Continent,  Mr.  Roosevelt  meant  the 
United  States.  His  coming  was  the  arrival  of  the 
magician  who  had  made  America  to  loom  over  the  top  of 
the  sea,  and  finally  to  become  visible  from  Madrid,  Paris, 
Berlin  and  London,  and  even  from  China  and  from  the 
islands  of  the  Pacific. 

Such  was  the  European  point  of  view.  Its  correctness 
or  its  superficiality  need  not  here  be  discussed.  The  fact 
remains  :  for  France,  as  for  Europe,  Mr.  Roosevelt  personi- 
fied, and  still  personifies,  an  epoch  of  American  history. 
The  curiosity  which  the  ex-president  evoked  in  Paris 
sprang  from  a  feeling  of  genuine  and  disinterested  ad- 


30  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

miration  for  the  man  who  had  made  the  Republic  of  the 
United  States  more  than  merely  visible  to  the  naked  eye, 
who  seemed  to  have  introduced  it  into  the  concert  of  the 
Powers;  and  the  sympathy  with  which  he  was  greeted 
in  France  was  but  the  natural  payment  of  a  debt  of 
gratitude  to  a  man  who  had  done  that  country  signal 
service  at  a  moment  of  grave  crisis.  Moreover,  as  chance 
would  have  it,  he  came  to  France  "  in  the  nick  of  time." 
He  was  the  representative,  it  is  true,  of  ideals  which  are 
not  new,  some  of  which,  indeed,  had  been  uttered  by  a 
foreigner  more  than  twelve  years  before,  but  which  had 
then  fallen  on  stony  soil.  The  time  was  ripe  for  his 
visit. 

t  During  the  period  in  which  the  United  States  was 
materializing  for  European  observers  out  of  the  mirage 
which  had  seemed  for  so  long  a  time  a  mere  cloud-bank 
in  the  Western  Atlantic,  the  relations  of  the  European 
States  were  evolving  in  accordance  with  the  laws  of  equi- 
librium, which,  hi  the  language  of  politics,  means  that 
those  States  were  engaged  in  a  struggle  for  the  balance  of 
power.  Bismarck  did  more  than  create  an  approximately 
united  Germany;  he  destroyed  Europe.  He  pitted  the 
Continental  nations  against  one  another  in  a  reciprocal 
enmity  which  seemed  likely  to  endure.  The  history  of 
Europe  during  the  last  twenty  years  has  been,  hi  its 
broadest  aspect,  merely  the  often  blind  but  consecutive 
effort  to  shatter  German  hegemony,  and  to  establish 
equilibrium  among  the  Great  Powers.  A  necessary  con- 
dition of  the  restoration  of  equilibrium  in  Europe  was  the 
renascence  of  France.  England  was  long  in  coming  to  this 
point  of  view,  but  Russia  clearly  perceived  the  fact  only 
a  few  years  after  the  conclusion  of  the  Treaty  of  Frank- 
fort, and  the  result  of  her  perspicacity  was  the  Franco- 
Russian  Alliance,  and  ultimately  the  Triple  Entente  be- 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    31 

tween  France,  Russia,  and  England,  which  was  a  device 
for  counterbalancing  the  prestige  of  the  Triple  Alliance. 

No  fact  is  more  characteristic  of  our  time  than  the 
Franco-Russian  Alliance.  But  no  fact  was  for  a  long 
period  more  misunderstood,  even  in  France.  The  French 
Foreign  Office  left  French  public  opinion  in  such  complete 
ignorance  of  the  real  diplomatic  bearings,  and  of  the 
practical  significance  of  that  alliance — which  was  inter- 
preted by  the  nation  as  an  earnest  of  ultimate  recovery 
of  Alsace-Lorraine — that  when,  in  August,  1898,  the  Tsar 
appealed  to  Europe  in  arms  to  meet  for  discussion  of  the 
problem  of  disbanding  the  standing  armies,  there  was  a 
spontaneous  protest,  a  wail  of  disenchantment,  throughout 
the  whole  French  nation.  When  the  young  Tsar  visited 
Versailles,  in  the  autumn  of  1896,  he  was  led  through  the 
famous  Galerie  des  Glaces,  where  the  German  Princes  had 
proclaimed  the  birth  of  an  empire  Avon  by  the  partial  dis- 
memberment of  France.  The  presence,  in  that  accursed 
spot,  of  a  more  arbitrary  potentate  than  even  a  Hohen- 
zollern  drunk  with  victory,  was  given  almost  a  lustral 
importance  by  certain  observers,  who  had  no  difficulty 
in  convincing  the  quick  French  imagination  of  their  per- 
spicacity.1 Nicholas  II  was  conceived  by  them  as  a  great 

1  I  was  one  of  the  few  unofficial  guests  of  the  French  Government, 
in  the  Palace  of  Versailles,  on  the  occasion  of  the  Tsar's  visit,  October  8, 
1896.  That  night  I  telegraphed  to  the  London  Times  a  long  dispatch 
describing  the  scene  in  the  Palace.  That  dispatch  contained  the  fol- 
lowing paragraph:  "  We  were  in  the  historic  hall,  where  the  old  Em- 
peror William,  all  the  German  Sovereigns,  and  the  Iron  Chancellor 
proclaimed  the  German  Empire.  We  were  awaiting  the  coming  of 
the  great  Imperial  friend  of  France,  who,  by  his  presence,  was,  in  the 
eyes  of  Frenchmen,  to  purify  this  hall  of  the  associations  that  for 
Uventy-five  years  have  made  Versailles  a  name  not  of  glory,  but  of 
humiliation.  We  had  been  convened  to  witness  an  act  almost  religious 
in  its  seriousness.  High  over  our  heads,  at  the  base  of  the  central 
painting  of  the  ceiling,  was  the  legend  '  Le  Boi  Gouverne  Par  Lui- 
meme.'  Beneath  this  haughty  assumption  of  the  old  Monarchy, 


32  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

and  friendly  monarch  who  had  hunted  the  German 
spectre  from  that  historic  hall,  and  had  purified  it  for 
French  ends.  If  the  French  nation,  as  a  whole,  welcomed 
the  Russian  Alliance,  it  was  because  it  felt  that  France 
could  now  hold  up  her  head  in  Europe,  and  that  one  day, 
perhaps,  she  could  tear  up  the  Treaty  of  Frankfort.  The 
burst  of  enthusiasm  which  greeted  the  Russian  sovereigns 
on  their  several  visits  to  France  had  no  other  meaning 
than  this:  "  You  are  our  friends,  and  some  day  you  and 
we  together  will  put  Prussia  in  her  place." 

Thus,  two  great  people,  utilizing  all  the  democratic 
forces  of  publicity  at  their  disposal,  so  transformed  the 
arts  of  diplomacy  that  the  union  which  they  had  formed 
could  no  longer  be  defined  in  the  old  idioms,  and  by  such 
oft-used  words  as  "  treaty  "  and  "  alliance."  But  there 
was  to  be  a  rude  awakening. 

In  August  1898  the  Imperial  Russian  Gazette  published 
the  appeal  of  the  Tsar  in  favour  of  disarmament.  In 
France  this  publication  was  an  unexpected  peal  of  thunder 
shattering  all  the  hopes  of  the  nation.1  Public  opinion  in 
France,  dumbfounded  at  the  blow,  accused  her  rulers  of 
having  been  duped  by  the  Russian  Foreign  Office,  which 
was  represented  as  having  acted  in  the  interests  of  the 
two  autocratic  conspirators,  the  German  Emperor  and 
the  Tsar.  An  eminent  historian,  M.  Lavisse,  Academician 
and  professor  at  the  Sorbonne,  expressed  on  this  occasion 
the  feeling  not  only  of  the  masses  but  of  the  nation  as  a 

William  I  had  proclaimed  the  birth  of  an  Empire  won  by  the  partial 
dismemberment  of  France.  He  had  chosen  this  proud  vantage-point 
with  a  bitter  irony,  the  sting  of  which  could  be  mitigated  only  by  the 
passage  across  this  spot  of  a  monarch  still  more  autocratic  than  he. 
The  palace  had  waited  a  quarter  of  a  century  for  the  grand  purifica- 
tion which  was  soon  to  restore  it  unsullied  to  the  admiration  of  French- 
men." 

1  See  note,  p.  56. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    33 

whole  when  he  said:  "  Never  has  our  Government  taken 
care  to  explain  to  us  the  exact  meaning  of  the  alliance. 
It  has  thus  far  spoken  and  acted  as  if  there  were  an  under- 
standing warranting  vast  hopes.  It  has  encouraged  the 
very  natural  illusions  of  a  country  given  to  enthusiasms. 
It  has  not  perceived  that  we  needed  the  real  truths,  naked 
and  dry — harsh  if  necessary." 

The  "  real  truth  "  was  that  the  French  statesmen  who 
had  extolled  an  alliance  with  Russia  had  done  so  in  the 
interests  of  peace,  but  that  they  were  of  the  school  of 
Gambetta,  whose  maxim  was  that  if  France  would  come 
to  an  understanding  with  Russia,  she  could  do  more  than 
recover  her  position  in  Europe:  she  would  be  able  to 
destroy  German  hegemony.  In  a  period  when  the  carking 
desire  for  the  revanche  still  dominated  French  society,  it 
would  have  been  impossible,  in  a  democratic  community 
like  that  of  France,  to  undertake  to  dispel  or  even  to 
temper  "  the  natural  illusions  of  a  country  given  to  enthu- 
siasms," and  to  substitute  for  the  misconstructions  of 
French  opinion  as  to  the  Russian  Alliance  truer  concep- 
tions of  the  European  situation,  and  an  exact  notion  of 
the  scope  of  the  defensive  alliance  with  the  Tsar.  The 
essential  thing  for  those  who  were  responsible  for  the 
destinies  of  France  was  to  effect  the  alliance  at  all  costs. 
Its  bearing  and  significance  could  be  explained  later  on. 
The  disillusionment  caused  throughout  France,  as  French- 
men gradually  grew  to  understand  that  the  alliance  im- 
plied no  active  policy  of  aggression  culminating  in  the 
revanche,  but  meant  the  melancholy  maintenance  of  the 
status  quo  as  determined  by  the  Treaty  of  Frankfort,1  and 

1  The  situation  was,  I  believe,  described  with  absolute  accuracy  by 
the  Socialist  leader,  M.  Jaures,  in  a  speech  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies 
on  JIarch  22,  1912.  He  said:  "  Vous  savez  bien  que  1'alliance  russe 
n'a  pas  eu  explicitement  pour  base  le  maintien  du  statu  quo,  mais  si 
VOUB  voulez  scruter  a  fond  les  evenements,  si  vous  voulez  recueillir  le 

D 


34  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

that  all  that  subsisted  of  the  "  long  hopes  and  the  vast 
thoughts  "  of  the  early  epoch  of  enthusiasm  was  the  some- 
what mystical  faith  of  Gambetta  in  an  "  immanent  jus- 
tice,"— this  disillusionment  was  one  of  the  most  tragic 
experiences  that  ever  befel  a  generous  nation.  The  ex- 
perience tended  to  cultivate  in  it  as  a  whole  that  spirit  of 
positivism  and  resignation  which  had  previously  been 
characteristic  of  only  a  part  of  the  nation.  It  cultivated 
also  the  stoic  courage  to  see  and  to  take  things  as  they  are, 
which  is  the  primary  condition  of  practical  statesmanship ; 
and  France,  ha  seeking  to  readjust  herself  to  the  conditions 
revealed  by  her  belated  perspicacity,  fell  back  upon  the 
resolve  to  "  make  the  best  "  of  the  best  bargain  which  her 
rulers  had  been  able  to  arrange  in  their  efforts  to  restore 
her  to  her  place  in  the  world. 

The  Tsar's  appeal  to  Europe  was  examined  in  this  fresh 
light.  On  reflection  it  was  seen  to  be,  after  all,  an  utter- 
ance and  an  act  inspired  by  some  of  the  soundest  of 
French  traditions.  What  it  really  amounted  to  was  the 
convocation  of  the  Etats-Generaux  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury; and  it  was  not  that  by  a  figure  of  speech,  but  actu- 
ally that.  Only  the  conditions  of  our  "  laic  "x  time,  the 
multiple  material  conditions,  had  made  such  an  appeal 
possible.  Europe  as  a  whole,  to-day,  is  smaller  than  the 
France  whose  woes  and  reclamations  were  considered  in 
1789  by  Necker  and  the  king;  but  to-day,  as  then, 

temoignage,  le  jugement  que  portait  M.  Albert  Vandal  et  que  notre 
collegue  M.  Denys  Cochin  commentait  1'autre  jour  eloquemment  a 
1' Academic  Fran9aise,  vous  verrez  qu'en  fait  la  Russie,  toujours  tentee, 
malgre  tout,  de  menager  la  dynastic  allemande  ne  vous  a  donne  la 
main  que  pour  une  oeuvre  de  paix  continuee ;  et  vous  savez  bien  que 
si  la  revanche,  si  la  reparation  devrait  dependre  d'entreprises  belli- 
queuses,  vous  eavez  bien  que  tout  le  jeu  de  votre  politique,  depuis 
quarante-deux  ans,  aurait  6te  de  1'ajourner." 
1  See  note,  p.  91. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    35 

"  orders  "  corresponding  with  those  of  the  ancien  regime 
are  interested  in  preventing  the  possibility  of  the  reform 
proposed  by  the  Tsar.  The  National  Assembly  had  de- 
clared "  fraternity,"  had  cried  urbi  et  orbi  :  "  there  shall 
be  no  more  war."  The  time  was  not  yet  ripe.  It  was 
not  ripe  when  the  reform  was  extolled  by  Napoleon  III 
in  1863.1  But  it  was  all  but  ripe  in  1898,  and  it  is  still 
riper  to-day  because  of  the  march  of  the  factors,  or 
rather  the  multiplication  of  the  peculiar  material  con- 
ditions, which  are  transforming  the  very  mentality  of 
the  race.  Bismarck  retarded  the  work  of  the  French 
Revolution,  gagging  France  and  flinging  Europe  back 
into  the  old  regime.  Louis  Napoleon  had  begun  in  the 
revolutionary  spirit,  but  Germany  blocked  the  way. 
At  last  France  resumed  her  onward  march,  and — irony 
of  ironies  ! — the  Tsar,  arriving  with  his  historic  appeal 
to  the  nations,  showed  himself  the  real  heir  of  the 
Revolution,  the  continuator  of  the  work  of  the  National 
Assembly. 

There  are  two  French  ideals :  that  of  les  droits  de  Vhomme, 
and  that  of  la  raison  d'etat,  and  the  struggle  between  them 
makes  French  history  the  most  fascinating  and  human  of 
all  histories.2  The  Tsar,  personifying  the  first  of  these 
ideals,  pointed  the  way  to  France,  and  gave  voice  to  her 
revolutionary  spirit,  her  concern  for  right  and  human 
liberty,  her  scorn  for  privilege  and  la  raison  d'etat,  her 
sublime  Utopian  logic.  Three  years  after  his  famous 
appeal  in  favour  of  disarmament  the  Tsar  paid  a  second 

1  My  old  chief,  M.  de  Blowitz,  writing  in  The  Times  of  August  30, 
1898,  on  the  subject  of  the  Tsar's  proposal,  compared  that  monarch 
to  Napoleon  III,  and  said:  "Napoleon  III  once  dreamed  of  some- 
thing of  the  sort,  and  in  a  solemn  speech  published  his  dream  to  an 
astonished  world.  The  dream  melted  away,  before  common  sense  and 
reality,  without  bringing  about  a  catastrophe." 

a  See  pp.  110-1M. 


36  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

visit  to  France.  At  Compiegne,  on  Friday,  September  19, 
1901,  he  gave  audience  to  M.  Bourgeois,  the  French 
plenipotentiary  at  the  Hague  Conference.  This  was  the 
morrow  of  the  day  spent  by  the  Tsar  on  the  field  of 
manoeuvres  at  Betheny,  where  at  luncheon,  in  the  case- 
mates of  the  Fort  of  Vitry,  he  proposed  a  toast  in  the 
following  words:  "  I  drink  to  the  brave  French  army,  to 
its  glory  and  to  its  prosperity,  and  I  like  to  look  upon  it 
as  a  powerful  support  for  those  principles  of  equity  on 
which  repose  the  general  order,  the  peace,  and  the  well- 
being  of  the  nations." 

It  was  impossible  to  affirm  more  explicitly  that  the 
army  of  the  Franco-Russian  Alliance  was  the  army  of  the 
Hague.  "  Equity  "  on  the  lips  of  a  Russian  emperor  was 
synonymous  with  "  Justice  "  in  the  mouth  of  a  Roose- 
velt. France  no  longer  had  any  excuse  for  not  under- 
standing. 

She  did  understand:  not  merely  her  rulers,  but  her 
people.  And  yet,  how  many  of  their  sentimental  instincts 
were  wounded,  how  many  of  their  natural  impulses  ar- 
rested, by  the  certainty  that  "  the  principles  of  equity  on 
which  repose  the  general  order,  the  peace,  and  the  well- 
being  of  the  nations  "  must  henceforth  be  their  only 
resource  !  The  Tsar  had  sown,  in  the  teeth  of  a  driving 
Gallic  wind,  the  germs  of  pacifism  in  France.1  But  the 
seeds  had  pushed  to  the  light  amid  a  rank  undergrowth  of 
aspirations  towards  "  revenge."  Was  there  no  way  of 
making  a  harmonious  garden-plot  of  these  blades  of  corn 
and  of  these  scarlet  poppies  ?  Pacifism  and  War  !  Here 
were  two  reciprocal  contradictory  ideals.  Could  nothing 
be  done  to  reconcile  them  ? 

The  problem  seemed  to  the  French  to  have  been  solved 
by  the  ex-president  of  a  friendly  nation  and  a  "  sister  re- 

*  See  p.  181. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    37 

public."  The  rough-rider  of  Cuba  had  been  the  laureate 
of  the  Nobel  Peace  Prize.  Frenchmen  awaited  Mr. 
Roosevelt's  arrival  with  anxious  expectations,  hoping  to 
learn  from  his  lips  the  formula  which  the  United  States 
had  found  useful,  and  which  might  serve  as  a  remedy  for 
their  own  malaise.  They  were  not  disappointed.  Here 
is  what  the  ex-president  said  to  them  at  the  University  of 
Paris,  in  a  lecture  which  was  disseminated  by  the  Temps 
among  some  fifty  thousand  school-teachers  throughout 
the  country : 

"  The  good  man  should  be  strong  and  brave,  that  is  to  say,  capable 
of  fighting,  of  serving  his  country  as  a  soldier,  should  the  occasion 
arise.  There  are  well-intentioned  philosophers  who  declaim  against 
the  iniquity  of  war.  They  are  right,  provided  they  insist  merely  on 
the  iniquity.  War  is  a  horrible  thing;  and  an  unjust  war  is  a  crime 
against  humanity.  But  it  is  a  crime  of  this  sort  because  it  is  unjust 
not  because  it  is  war.  The  choice  should  always  be  in  favour  of  right, 
whether  the  alternative  is  peace  or  war.  The  question  should  not  be 
simply:  '  Is  there  going  to  be  peace  or  war  ?'  The  question  should  be: 
'  Shall  the  cause  of  right  prevail  ?  Are  the  great  laws  of  justice  once 
more  to  be  observed  ?'  And  the  reply  of  a  strong  and  virile  people 
will  be:  'Yes,  whatever  the  risk  may  be.'  No  honourable  effort 
should  ever  be  neglected  in  order  to  avoid  war,  just  as  no  honourable 
effort  should  be  neglected  by  an  individual,  in  private  life,  to  avoid  a 
quarrel;  but  no  self-respecting  individual,  and  no  self-respecting 
nation,  should  submit  to  injustice."1 

And  dotting  the  I's  with  a  vigorous  stroke,  in  a  hand- 
writing which  all  could  read,  the  speaker  concluded  with 
an  inspiriting  and  illuminating  definition  of  patriotism, 
and  of  its  bearing  on  international  relations.  He  seemed 
to  be  giving  a  voice  to  the  finer  idealism  of  French 
foreign  policy  under  the  Third  Republic.  The  truly 
patriotic  nation,  he  said,  made  the  best  member  of  the 
family  of  nations.  It  should  stand  up  for  its  rights,  but 
it  should  respect  the  rights  of  others.  "  International 

i  See  pp.  192-193,  note  3. 


38  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

law,"  however,  was  not  private  law,  and  it  lacked  as  yet 
a  recognized  sanction.  For  the  present,  every  nation 
must  be  the  final  judge  of  its  own  vital  interests,  and 
in  the  last  resort  must  have  the  will  and  the  strength 
to  withstand  the  wrong  which  another  would  inflict  upon 
it.  The  nations  were  all  for  peace  and  justice,  but  "  if 
peace  and  justice  were  at  loggerheads,  they  would  de- 
spise the  man  who  did  not  take  the  side  of  justice,  even 
though  the  whole  world  were  to  rise  up  in  arms  against 
him." 

No  lips  since  Gambetta's  had  addressed  Frenchmen  with 
this  lucidity  and  this  authority.  And  the  lips  were  those  of 
the  one  distinguished  foreigner  whose  sincerity  was  beyond 
suspicion.  Mr.  Roosevelt  justified  Frenchmen  to  them- 
selves.1 He  capped  the  work  of  the  Tsar,  reconciling  the 
two  great  principles  which  had  presided  over  the  evolution 
of  French  history:  the  spirit  that  had  informed  the  De- 
claration of  the  Rights  of  Man,  and  the  spirit  that,  from 
the  defeat  of  Ariovistus  to  the  Treaty  of  Nimegue,  had 
animated  the  soul  of  the  nation  in  its  long  struggle  towards 
unity  and  la  raison  d'etat. 

The  man  who  had  thus  eloquently  expressed  the  aspira- 
tions of  the  French  soul  and  its  anxious  reflections  on 
problems  which  concern  the  very  existence  of  France  as  a 
nation,  could  be  permitted  to  utter  certain  home  truths 
which  would  have  been  tolerated  from  no  one  else;  and 
Mr.  Roosevelt  made  the  most  of  his  advantage.  It  was 
not  merely  a  matter  of  his  reminding  a  people  who  had 
inscribed  the  word  "  Egalite  "  on  all  their  public  monu- 
ments (not  excepting  the  portals  of  their  cemeteries — 

1  The  author  of  Le  Patriotisme  en  France  et  Vetranger,  1912,  M.  Paul 
Pilant,  publishes  in  his  excellent  book  an  article  written  by  him  in 
June  1910,  and  "dedicated  to  the  French  pacifists,"  in  which  he 
cites  Mr.  Roosevelt  as  an  admirable  professor  of  energy  for  the  French 
people. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    39 

perhaps  the  only  place  where  it  deserves  to  figure)  that 
"Equality"  is  an  absurdity;  that  there  are  degrees  of 
worth,  and  thus  degrees  of  legitimate  superiority,  and  con- 
sequently of  desert  and  social  rank ;  and  that  only  men  who 
are  equal  are  equal.  It  was  not  merely  a  matter  of  his 
paean  in  honour  of  the  man  of  action  and  character,  which 
contained  passages  of  withering  scorn  for  the  cynic  who 
watches  the  fray  from  afar,  regarding  it  as  vulgar  to  take 
part  in  the  battle  and  "  distinguished  "  to  criticize,  and 
to  count  the  blows  dealt  by  others — utterances  as  stinging 
as  those  in  which  the  Abbe  Coyer  castigated  the  aris- 
tocracy of  his  time  for  their  indifference  to  the  great  civic, 
political  and  commercial  interests  of  the  community ;  and 
utterances,  moreover,  that  were  singularly  audacious  in 
a  society  where  so  small  a  proportion  of  the  electorate 
care  to  indulge  in  their  right  of  suffrage.  It  was  not  even 
Mr.  Roosevelt's  haughty  assumption  to  be  speaking  to 
the  doctors  of  the  Sorbonne  as  the  Paul  of  a  New  Dis- 
pensation, and  his  venturing  to  assure  these  Gamaliels 
that  all  the  science  of  the  schools  is  as  nothing  in  com- 
parison with  common  sense  and  those  qualities  which, 
while  giving  a  man  self-confidence,  give  him  at  the  same 
time  a  sentiment  of  his  responsibility  as  a  member  of 
society.  It  was  not  the  fact  of  Mr.  Roosevelt's  fulminating 
as  a  kind  of  Protestant  Savonarola,  in  the  downright 
Anglo-Saxon  way,  that  moved  the  heart  of  France.  It 
was  the  mere  fact  of  his  existence  as  a  type ;  the  fact  that 
a  man  who  had  been  President  of  a  Republic  should  pos- 
sess ideas  of  his  own,  and  take  himself  seriously  as  a  leader 
of  men  and  a  teacher,  whereas  in  their  own  country  the 
head  of  the  State  was  a  vague  personage  without  known 
views  of  any  kind,  without  initiative  or  authority,  and  a 
man  who,  if  he  were  to  venture  to  enunciate  any  ideas  or 
to  play  a  role,  would  expose  himself,  in  spite  of  the  Con- 


40 

stitution,1  to  the  French  form  of  impeachment,  and  per- 
haps eventually  be  brought  up  for  trial  before  Parliament 
sitting  as  a  High  Court  of  Justice. 

As  an  illustration  of  what  one  may,  what,  indeed,  one 
must,  call  the  Consular  character  of  Republican  govern- 
ment in  the  United  States,  one  need  only  quote  the  words 
of  Mr.  Roosevelt  in  his  address  delivered  at  Christiania, 
May  5,  1910,  on  "The  Colonial  Policy  of  the  United 
States."  He  warned  his  hearers  on  that  occasion  that 
his  remarks  on  peace  as  incumbent  of  the  Nobel  Prize 
should  be  taken  in  the  light  of  what  he  "  actually  did  "  as 
President.  The  United  States  kept  her  promise  to  the 
letter  as  to  the  evacuation  of  Cuba,  and  her  intervention 
in  San  Domingo  was  solely  to  "  prevent  the  need  of  taking 
possession  of  the  island."  But  what  was  the  President's 
role,  his  "  manner  "  as  a  responsible  exponent  of  American 
policy  ?  In  a  period  of  anarchy  and  revolution  Mr. 
Roosevelt  negotiated  a  treaty  with  the  Government  of 
the  Island  in  virtue  of  which  an  American  was  placed  at 
the  head  of  the  Customs  Houses  and  the  United  States 
agreed  to  turn  over  to  the  San  Domingo  Government 

1  "In  spite  of  the  Constitution"  The  French  Constitution  unques- 
tionably grants  the  President  the  rights  of  message  and  suspension, 
the  rights  of  prorogation  and  dissolution  of  Parliament.  And  no 
doubt,  as  Mr.  Henry  Leyret  says  in  his  brilliant  book:  Le  President  de 
la  Republique  (Colin,  1913),  p.  ix,  "  not  to  use  these  rights  c'est  trahir 
les  citoyens."  The  whole  question,  however,  is  whether  the  President 
is  free  to  apply  the  Constitution.  Elected  by  the  members  of  the  two 
Houses,  can  he  be  expected  to  take  initiatives  which  may  create  friction 
between  the  Chamber  and  himself  ?  M.  Leyret  argues  that  he  can, 
provided  he  keeps  ever  in  mind  the  principle  of  the  Separation  of 
Powers.  But  that  principle  has  become  painfully  blurred  in  France. 
At  all  events,  whatever  may  be  the  letter  of  the  Constitution,  its  prac- 
tical application  has  more  and  more  tended  to  limit  the  role  of  the 
President,  and  the  real  problem  at  present,  as  will  be  seen  later  on 
(pp.  144-146),  is  how  to  restore  the  Separation  of  Powers,  so  as  to 
prevent  usurpation  of  the  executive  by  the  legislative  authority. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    41 

45  per  cent,  of  the  revenue,  keeping  55  per  cent,  as  a  fund 
to  be  applied  to  a  settlement  with  the  creditors.  The 
creditors  acquiesced.  The  United  States  Senate  alone 
held  out.  But,  says  Mr.  Roosevelt,  "  /  went  ahead  any- 
how and  executed  the  treaty  until  it  was  ratified."  By  his 
"  going  ahead  anyhow,"  without  Constitutional  sanction, 
the  San  Domingo  Government  has  received  nearly  double 
the  amount  of  the  revenues  they  got  when  they  collected 
it  all  themselves,  and  the  United  States  gave  the  world 
the  impression  that  it  was  acting  in  good  faith.  Mr.  Roose- 
velt's policy  in  San  Domingo  was  attacked  by  those 
whom  he  calls  "  the  hysterical  sentimentalists  for  peace," 
but  "  he  went  straight  ahead  and  did  the  job,"  in  spite 
of  the  charge  that  he  had  "  declared  war  "  against  San 
Domingo.  In  the  same  way,  referring  to  the  Isthmus 
of  Panama,  where  the  responsible  Government  was  in- 
capable of  crushing  out  lawlessness,  he  says:  "  As  nobody 
else  was  able  to  deal  with  the  matter,  I  dealt  with  it 
myself,  on  behalf  of  the  United  States  Government,  and 
now  the  Canal  is  being  dug,  and  the  people  of  Panama 
have  their  independence  and  a  prosperity  hitherto  un- 
known in  that  country."1  One  need  not  for  the  moment 
concern  oneself  with  the  result  of  these  policies,  but 
merely  with  their  Constitutional  character;  and  the 
obvious  fact  is  that  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States, 
alone  among  the  Constitutions  of  the  civilized  Powers,  is 
sufficiently  elastic  to  permit  the  Head  of  the  State  to 
act  thus  irresponsibly  for  responsible  ends;  to  "deal 
with  the  matter  himself  on  behalf  of  the  Government  " ; 
to  "go  ahead  anyhow,"  provisionally  indifferent  as  to  the 
Constitutional  sanction  of  his  actions.  This  is  a  form  of 
real-politik  which  is  Bismarckian  in  its  processes,  but 
which  no  modern  Bismarck,  even  in  Germany,  could 
i  Cf.,  however,  p.  192. 


42  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

successfully  imitate.  No  British  sovereign,  or  French 
President,  or  Turkish  Sultan,  hardly  any  Russian  Tsar, 
could  act  in  a  manner  so  arbitrary.  The  fact  that  the 
scope  of  the  powers  of  the  Head  of  the  United  States  is 
potentially  of  this  almost  unlimited,  positively  Montene- 
grin, character  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  singular 
features  in  the  whole  history  of  Constitutional  govern- 
ment. 

This  fact,  to  be  sure,  can  be  viewed  under  another  light ; 
it  is  not  merely  "  interesting  and  singular  " :  it  may 
conceivably  constitute  a  danger  for  what  is  called  popular 
liberty.  In  connexion  with  the  Presidential  campaign  of 
1912,  above  all  with  reference  to  the  discussion  of  the 
question  of  the  third  term  for  Mr.  Roosevelt  himself, 
there  was  proposed  to  Congress  a  scheme  extending  the 
American  President's  term  of  office  from  four  to  six  years, 
and  rendering  him  ineligible  for  a  second  term.  The 
framers  of  this  measure  were  fully  aware  of  the  immense 
range  of  powers  conferred  in  the  United  States  upon  the 
Executive  Authority.  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  army 
and  the  navy,  the  President,  as  the  appointing  officer, 
has  also  beneath  him  a  great  army  of  civilian  officials  who 
look  to  him  for  their  continuance  in  office.  As  the  organ 
of  Mr.  Roosevelt,  the  Outlook,  acknowledged  (May  25, 
1912,  p.  152),  "There  are  other  powers  inherent  in  the 
Executive  Authority  that  help  to  render  the  President 
of  the  United  States  powerful  beyond  the  dreams  of  many 
a  king."  The  high-minded  but  doctrinaire,  and  therefore 
unsound,  thinkers  who  (notwithstanding  their  recognition 
of  the  fact  that  "  there  is  undoubtedly  an  evil  in  the 
misuse  of  patronage,"  and  that  "  there  is  a  danger  in  the 
possibility  of  a  President's  continuing  himself  in  power 
longer  than  the  people  wish  ")  objected  to  the  proposal 
to  limit  the  President's  authority,  ventured  upon  the 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    43 

following:  "  Any  President  who  is  continued  in  office 
through  the  mandate  of  the  people  furnishes  no  danger  of 
dictatorship."  It  is  a  beautiful  case  of  deductive  reason- 
ing, of  a  scholastic  perfection,  the  rotten  root  of  which 
is  the  petitio  principii  that  the  people  can  do  no  wrong; 
that  the  people  have  a  right  to  rule;  and  that  right  in 
this  last  phrase  has  a  clear,  axiomatic,  religiously  binding, 
sense,  requiring  no  commentary  or  justification.  Worse 
still,  the  assumption  that  a  President  who  is  not  ousted 
by  92  million  Americans,  to  whom  he  owes  his  election  by 
"direct  primaries,"  is  necessarily  the  best  exponent  of 
the  people's  wishes,  is  a  kind  of  a  priori  major  premiss 
which  the  most  superficial  knowledge  of  history,  from 
Caesar  to  Napoleon  III,  tends  to  discredit.  The  truth 
is  that  "  any  President  who  is  continued  in  office  through 
the  mandate  of  the  people  furnishes  "  many  a  "  danger  of 
dictatorship."  There  is  at  the  same  time  even  more 
abundant  evidence  in  historic  precedent,  as  well  as  in 
psychology,  to  show  that  the  whole  idea  of  mandate,  of 
representative  government,1  of  plebiscitary  elections,  or 
referendum  legislation,  are  relatively  primitive  conceptions 
for  the  attainment  of  that  social  justice  for  which  demo- 
cratic communities  are  all  clamouring,  but  which  their 
leaders  seem  less  and  less  likely  to  be  able  to  offer  them. 
The  case  of  Germany  throws  on  these  problems  only  a 
dim  light,  for  the  Prussian  King  who,  by  the  Constitution, 
has  become  the  "  German  Emperor,"  that  is  to  say  a  life- 
president,  is  the  visible  and  central  keystone  that  holds 
together  the  arch  of  the  confederated  German  States. 
Therein  lies  his  chief  utility  as  an  essential  part  of  the 
Constitutional  mechanism.  A  stable  head-of-t he-state 
is  a  logical  corollary  of  the  idea  of  German  unity.  Less 
organically  bound  up  with  that  idea  is,  perhaps,  the  Bis- 

1  See  pp.  204  et  seq. 


44  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

marckian  notion  that  the  Emperor,  through  his  Chan- 
cellor, is  the  necessary  counterpart  of  universal  suffrage, 
and  that  there  should  exist  a  "  Federal  Council  "  inde- 
pendent of  the  Reichstag.  When,  in  the  last  German 
elections,  110  socialists  were  returned  to  the  Reichstag, 
Herr  von  Bethmann-Hollweg,  the  Chancellor,  took 
occasion  to  remind  his  compatriots  that  Germany  is  not 
a  land  of  parliamentary  government,  and  to  proclaim 
that  he  was  independent  of  any  parliamentary  manifesta- 
tion of  the  people's  will  as  expressed  in  the  elections. 
These  brave  words,  however,  cannot  drown  the  murmurs 
of  unrest  that  are  more  and  more  loudly  heard  in  Germany, 
as  the  signs  of  a  Constitutional  crisis  accumulate.1 

Mr.  Roosevelt's  visit  to  France  coincided  with  the 
period  of  the  general  elections  for  the  Chamber  of  Deputies . 
The  ex-Minister  of  Finance,  M.  Jules  Roche,  a  leading 
Paris  editor,  stood  in  those  elections,  as  he  had  stood  for 
many  years,  for  a  constituency  in  the  Department  of  the 
Ardeche,  and  was  elected.  In  his  address  to  his  con- 
stituents, hi  which  he  thanked  them  for  their  confidence, 
he  said : — 

"  At  the  very  moment  when  the  ex- President  of  the  United  States 
was  so  magnificently  expounding  in  Paris  the  conditions  of  a  true 
republic  and  the  role  of  a  citizen,  you  were  offering  the  example  of 
an  entire  population  of  free  citizens  in  a  false  republic,  which  is  at 
the  mercy  of  arbitrary  action  and  the  prey  of  anarchy.  It  was  in 
vain  that  certain  so-called  republican  electors  trampled  tinder  foot 
the  essential  principles  of  a  republic,  and  acted  in  a  spirit  of  hostility 
toward  liberty  and  right.  You  proclaimed  in  loud  utterances,  you  as 
well  as  Mr.  Roosevelt,  that  there  is  no  republic  without  citizens,  and 
no  citizens  without  the  love  and  exercise  of  liberty,  and  no  liberty 
without  institutions  which  are  its  consecration  and  its  guarantee." 

M.  Roche's  electoral  rhetoric  should  be  taken  cum  grano 
salis  ;  but  the  passage  cited  is  significant  in  connexion 

1  See  p.  244. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    45 

with  what  followed  it.  This  was  nothing  less  than  the 
announcement  of  M.  Roche's  intention  to  propose  a  radical 
revision  of  the  Constitution  of  1875,  in  addition  to  the 
indispensable  electoral  reform;  a  revision  which  would 
embody  two  of  the  essential  principles  of  the  American 
Constitution — and  yet  the  United  States  is  a  Republic  ! — 
to  wit :  the  guarantee  of  the  necessary  rights  and  liberties 
of  the  citizen,  and  a  responsible  President  who  would 
choose  his  ministers  outside  of  Parliament.  M.  Jules 
Roche  revived  here  ideas  analogous  to  those  of  M.  Derou- 
lede.  The  latter  is  one  of  the  most  honourable  and 
sympathetic  of  contemporary  Frenchmen,  and  if  ever  the 
irony  of  fortune  had  lifted  him  to  the  Elysee,  it  seems  not 
improbable  to  many  close  observers  that  he  would  have 
been  a  president  of  the  stamp  of  Mr.  Roosevelt:  instead 
of  which,  France  ostracized  him  as  a  danger  to  the  State ! 
But  France,  as  it  happens,  is  not  yet  convinced  that  she 
wants  a  president  of  that  stamp.  Neither  a  Deroulede 
nor  a  Roche  is  ever  likely  to  rule  her,  and  their  cases  have 
been  cited  merely  because  it  is  interesting  to  observe  that 
their  ideas,  which  in  the  present  state  of  the  Republic 
in  France  are  bound  to  class  them  among  the  reactionaries 
and  almost  to  appear  subversive,  are  the  commonplaces 
of  Republicanism  in  the  great  democratic  community  of 
the  West. 

The  fact  would  really  seem  to  imply  a  curious  anomaly. 
It  would  suggest,  at  all  events,  that  there  are  more  forms 
and  kinds  of  republics  than  are  usually  supposed  to  exist, 
and  that  there  is  no  obvious  reason  for  using  the  same 
word  to  describe  two  communities  governed  in  ways  so 
radically  disparate  as  are  the  United  States  and  France. 

Of  course  M.  Jules  Roche,  for  his  own  political  pur- 
poses, put  his  finger  on  one  of  the  essential  differences  be- 
tween France  and  the  United  States.  As  he  has  observed 


46  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

with  admiration,  in  the  United  States  a  responsible  man 
is  placed  at  the  head  of  the  State,  whereas  in  France  the 
fear  of  a  "  man  "  has  for  forty  years  been  the  beginning 
of  political  wisdom.  The  fear  of  a  "  man  "  has  been  an 
inevitable  state  of  mind  of  the  French  republicans,  since 
the  Republic  in  its  development  has  had  to  fight  for  its 
life  amid  a  world  of  enemies  surviving  from  the  old 
regimes.  The  Constitution  of  1875,  under  which  France 
is  now  vegetating,  was  adopted  by  a  majority  of  but  one 
vote,1  and  that  Constitution  was  only  a  step — a  moment 
of  repose  when  the  nation  seemed  to  be  marking  time — 
in  the  century-long  effort,  which  has  by  no  means  yet 
been  realized,  to  organize  the  sovereignty  of  the  people 
in  a  free  country,  with  a  responsible  government  that 
should  be  controlled  by  the  nation.  The  spirit  of  unity, 
inoculated  in  the  French  soul  by  the  monarchy,  has  above 
all  been  imposed  by  the  geographical  position  of  France. 
In  the  United  States,  on  the  contrary,  the  political  ten- 
dencies were  all  centrifugal,  and  the  natural  principle  was 
that  of  federalism  until  the  unity  of  the  nation  was 
achieved — perhaps  provisionally — by  the  enormous  sacri- 
fice of  blood  during  the  Civil  War.  In  France  the  fear 
of  a  "  man  "  was  the  form  assumed  by  dread  memories: 
the  two  experiments  of  the  monarchy  and  of  the  empire, 
two  foreign  invasions  (1814-1815  and  1870-1871),  and 
three  revolutions  (1789,  1830  and  1848).  As  the  his- 
torian of  the  Third  Republic,  M.  Hanotaux,  puts  it :  "  Les 
esprits  eclaires  qui  dirigeaient  VAssemblee  Nationale  avaient 
la  honte,  la  haine,  Vhorreur  du  pouvoir  personnel,  du  des- 
potisme  et  de  la  dictature.  Done  la  volonte  nationale  etait 

1  See  p.  137.  The  Wallon  amendment:  "  Le  President  de  la  Re- 
publique  est  elu  pour  sept  ans  .  .  .  ,"  was  passed  by  353  votes  to  352. 
"  By  the  irony  of  things  the  most  convinced  monarchists  had  said  some 
time  before:  nous  ferons  la  monarchic,  fut-ce  ft  une  voix  de  majorite." 
(Souvenirs  1848-1878,  by  C.  de  Freycinet,  p.  317.) 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    47 

unitaire  tandis  que  la  prudence  nationale  etait  libertaire." 
The  Constitution  of  1875,  therefore,  maintained  national 
unity,  and  preserved  the  admirable  scaffolding  of  govern- 
ment known  as  the  administration,  but  did  everything 
in  its  power  to  discourage  personal  ambition  and  to  en- 
feeble such  ideas  of  citizenship  as  were  bound  to  be 
extolled  by  Theodore  Roosevelt,  the  most  authoritative 
exponent  of  the  traditionally  American  political  philos- 
ophy to  whom  France  was  ever  likely  to  listen.  "  Rarely," 
says  M.  Hanotaux,  speaking  of  the  Constitution  of  1875, 
"  has  a  more  complicated  pagoda  been  constructed  to 
shelter  a  more  diminutive  god."  And  he  is  right.  All 
that  Republican  France  desired  was  a  visible  figure-head 
at  the  summit  of  the  monument.  The  type  of  chef  d'etat 
represented  by  a  President  of  the  United  States  is  a 
monster  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Constitution  of  the 
Parliamentary  Republic  of  France.  "  Every  act  of  the 
president  of  the  Republic ," says  Clause  3  of  that  Constitu- 
tion, "  must  be  countersigned  by  a  minister,"  and  these 
ministers  are  responsible  not  to  the  head  of  the  State, 
but  to  the  Chamber  of  Deputies,  upon  whom  they  depend. 
In  the  France  of  the  Third  Republic  superiority  of  every 
kind  has  been  damned  in  the  name  of  equality,  and  sup- 
pressed in  the  name  of  la  raison  d'etat.  Nothing  resem- 
bling an  organized  democracy  has  ever  existed  in  France, 
where  the  ship  of  state  is  still  sailed  by  a  small  crew — 
the  "  Government  of  the  ten  thousand,"  to  use  Bismarck's 
phrase — who  have  seized  and  manned  the  Napoleonic 
administration  and  the  political  machinery.  The  role 
of  the  head  of  the  State,  as  it  has  worked  out  in  practice 
under  the  Third  Republic,  has  shrunk  to  an  even  narrower 
compass  than  the  delimitation  fixed  by  the  Constitution 
of  1875.  Discipline,  inter-subordination,  beginning  with 
the  president,  are  the  marks  of  French  citizenship.  There 


48  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

is  no  recognized  place  for  individual  initiative.  French 
youths  have  uniformly  aspired  to  become  "  function- 
aries," civil  servants,  a  part,  however  subordinate,  of  the 
vast  machine;  few  have  dreamed  of  becoming  leaders  of 
men,  and  of  "  serving  "  the  body-politic  in  the  American 
way.  All  this  has  produced  an  automatic  civic  life  in 
which  the  Chambers  and  the  Administration  have  directed 
the  acts  of  committees  known  as  Governments.  It  is  a 
state  of  things  radically  the  opposite  of  that  resulting 
from  the  American  Constitution.  A  career  like  that  of 
Mr.  Roosevelt  would  be  impossible  for  a  public  man  in 
France,  and  were  a  Frenchman  to  try  to  test  the  elasticity 
of  the  French  Constitution,  and  seek  to  secure  the  personal 
authority  and  prestige  of  a  Roosevelt,  he  would  quickly 
become  the  incarnation  of  all  the  reactionary  aspirations 
in  the  country,  and  might,  ultimately,  as  has  been  said, 
be  impeached  before  the  Haute-Cour. 

France,  even  Republican  France,  suffers,  as  will  be  seen 
later  on,1  from  the  monotony  of  the  bureaucratic  auto- 
matism of  its  civic  lif e,  in  which  the  form  of  ballot  known 
as  le  scrutin  d'arrondissement  prevents  the  education  of  the 
elector  on  any  question  of  general  policy  and  renders  the 
deputy  the  creature  of  the  State  official.  Yet  the  nation 
longs  for  a  franker  party  organization,  for  the  opportunity 
to  discuss  great  national  questions,  for  the  thrill  of  a  really 
democratic  existence.  There  is  no  doubt  that  its  citizens 
are  eager  to  escape  from  the  individual  veulerie  which 
tends  to  be  the  political  fate  of  men  who  have  not  even, 
as  under  the  Second  Empire,  the  compensation  of  being 
able  to  satisfy  their  liking  for  a  glorious  facade  and  of 
cherishing  the  sentiment  of  respect.  Now  Mr.  Roosevelt, 
in  his  categorical  way,  gave  utterance,  with  clarion-toned 
efficiency,  to  the  unexpressed  longings  of  the  Republicans, 
1  See  Book  II,  Ch.  4. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    49 

while  still  seeming  to  speak  the  language  of  the  liberal, 
even  of  the  reactionary,  opposition.  The  Republicans, 
who  one  and  all  agreed  with  him,  but  dared  not  openly 
confess  it,  since  such  confession  would  have  classed  them 
with  the  reactionaries,  tolerated  Mr.  Roosevelt's  home 
truths,  solely  because  they  came  from  American  and 
"  Republican  "  lips;  but  from  any  other  personality  of 
his  eminence — crowned  head  or  other — many  of  the  ideas 
to  which  he  gave  expression  would  have  been  held  to 
verge  on  impertinence.  The  conservatives  and  the  re- 
actionaries, on  the  other  hand,  are  always  chiding  the 
Republic,  and  they  welcomed  Mr.  Roosevelt  as  a  timely 
visitor  loaded  with  unexpected  grist  for  their  mills.  "  We 
told  you  so  !"  they  cried  to  their  republican  compatriots. 
"  What  a  lesson  !"  But  the  Republicans  were,  in  reality, 
no  less  delighted,  since  they,  too,  recognize  the  urgent 
necessity  of  reform ;  and  the  reform  has  already  begun  to 
come  in  the  spirit  of  Mr.  Roosevelt's  counsel. 

France  has  entered  upon  a  period  of  unrest,  of  adminis- 
trative and  electoral  reform,  which  is  bound  ultimately  to 
transform  the  very  foundations  of  her  Constitution.  It 
was  not  in  vain  that  in  the  hour  of  crisis  an  ex-president 
of  the  "  Republic  "  of  the  United  States  fearlessly  lectured 
the  "  sister  Republic  "  on  the  duties  of  citizenship,  and 
that  he  said  to  modern  France  such  things  as  these : 

"  A  good  citizen  will  insist  on  liberty  for  himself,  and  make  it  his 
pride  that  others  should  have  it  as  well  as  he.  Perhaps  the  best  test 
of  the  point  reached  in  any  country  by  the  love  of  liberty  is  the  way 
in  which  minorities  are  treated  there.  Not  only  should  there  be  com- 
plete liberty  in  matters  of  religion  and  opinion,  but  there  should  be 
complete  liberty  for  each  individual  to  lead  the  life  that  suits  him, 
provided  that  in  so  doing  he  does  no  harm  to  his  neighbour.  ...  In 
a  republic  it  is  necessary,  in  order  to  avoid  failure,  to  learn  how  to 
combine  intensity  of  conviction  with  a  large  tolerance  for  differences 
of  conviction.  Vast  divergencies  of  opinion  relative  to  religious, 
political  and  social  beliefs  will  exist  necessarily,  if  the  intelligence  and 


50  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

the  conscience  are  not  to  be  stifled,  but  to  develop  sanely.  The  bitter 
fratricidal  hatreds  based  on  such  divergencies  are  not  a  sign  of  ardent 
belief,  but  of  that  fanaticism  which,  whether  it  be  religious  or  anti- 
religious,  democratic  or  anti-democratic,  is  itself  merely  the  manifesta- 
tion of  sinister  bigotry,  which  is  in  turn  the  primary  cause  of  the 
downfall  of  so  many  nations." 

Since  Mr.  Roosevelt's  departure,  France  has  been  saying 
to  herself,  in  the  words  of  Dante  when  Virgil  chided : 
"The  self -same  tongue  first  wounded  and  then  healed  me." 


VII 

"  Bismarck,"  as  has  been  seen,  "  did  more  than  cre- 
ate  an  approximately  united    Germany;    he   destroyed 
Europe.  .  .  .     Bismarck  retarded  the  work  of  the  French 
Revolution,  gagging  France  and  flinging  Europe  back 
into  the  old  regime."    After  the  defeat  of  France,  the 
first  steps  towards  the  reconstruction  of  Europe,  by  the 
restoration  of  the  balance  of  power,  were  taken  by  the 
French  Republic  and  the  Tsar.     That,  however,  is  only 
a  brief  portion  of  the  story.     The  normal  evolution  of 
every  nation  in  Europe  has  been  disturbed,  if  not  utterly 
deranged,  by  the  action  of  Germany  in  annexing  Schleswig- 
Holstein1  and  in  seizing  the  French  provinces  of  Alsace 
and  Lorraine.     The  trend  of  European  history  during  the 
last  forty  years  has  been  determined  by  these  titanic 
blunders;  and  the  word  determined  should  be  taken  in 
its  scientific  sense.     Few  intellectual  exercises  are  more 
amusing  than  the  examination  of  the  internal  interplay 
of  European  events  since  the  Franco-German  war.     It 
is  a  constant  spectacle  of  resultants  of  force  revealing  in 
those  events  a  logical,  apparently  fatal,  sequence.     To 
enjoy  this  spectacle  it  is  sufficient  to  group  the  salient, 
essential  facts  round  certain  crucial  dates. 
*  Cf.  note  2,  p.  71. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    51 

The  date  of  the  fall  of  Bismarck,  in  1 890,  which  cuts  this 
period  almost  exactly  in  two,  is  more  than  a  convenient 
rallying  point  for  perplexed  observers  of  the  European 
movement.  Bismarck  gone,  responsibility  for  Germany's 
destinies  was  assumed  by  a  young  sovereign  of  exception- 
ally alert  intelligence,  fully  abreast  of  his  time,  and  per- 
fectly aware  of  the  deficiencies,  as  well  as  of  the  greatness, 
of  the  work  of  the  Founder  of  the  Empire. 

Bismarck  had  relied  mainly  on  his  political  intuition  to 
insure — yet  he  took  the  precaution  to  re-insure  by  treaty 
— German  prestige.1  He  presided  over  the  beginnings  of 
German  economic  enterprise  without  completely  compre- 
hending the  drift  of  the  time.  An  astute,  daring  and 
unscrupulous  diplomacy,  varied,  when  necessary,  by  a 
policy  of  intimidation  based  on  an  invincible  military 
force,  seemed  to  him  sufficient  to  maintain  his  country  at 
the  point  provisionally  guaranteed  to  her  by  the  Treaty  of 
Frankfort.  Too  practical,  too  realistic  entirely  to  ignore 
the  existence  of  those  subtle  factors  determining  human 
action,  which  he  called  "  the  imponderables,"  he  was 
nevertheless  constantly  led  by  his  superstitious  self- 
confidence  to  leave  too  many  of  them  out  of  account.2 
When  he  had  successfully  managed  the  Berlin  Congress 
which  he  had  organized,  and  during  which  his  chief  care 
was  the  preparation  of  the  Alliance  between  Austria  and 

1  "  A  visitor  of  Bismarck's  once  reminded  him  that  Schopenhauer 
used  to  sit  with  him  at  dinner  every  day  in  the  hotel  at  Frankfort. 
'  I  had  no  business  with  him ;  I  had  neither  time  nor  inclination  for 
philosophy,'  said  Bismarck,  '  and  I  know  nothing  of  Schopenhauer's 
system.'     It  was  summarily  explained  to  him  as  vesting  the  primacy 
of  the  will  in  self -consciousness.     '  I  dare  say  that  may  be  all  right,' 
he  said,  'for  myself,  at  least,  I  have  often  noticed  that  my  will  had 
decided  before  my  thinking  was  finished.'     Improvisation  has  more  to 
do  in  politics  than  people  think."     Anecdote  quoted  by  Lord  Morley, 
in  his  speech  as  Chancellor  of  Manchester  University,  June  28,  1912. 

2  See  p.  157  (note)  and  p.  320. 


52  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Germany,  he  fancied  he  had  forced  Europe  to  guarantee 
a  status  quo  based  on  the  stipulations  of  the  Treaty  of 
Frankfort,  on  the  concrete  reality  of  a  crushed  and  dis- 
membered France.  He  proceeded  to  take  the  obviously 
necessary  precautions.  He  came  to  an  arrangement  with 
Austria  in  1879,  and  simultaneously — with  a  show  of 
magnanimity  that  imperfectly  concealed  his  real  plan  to 
keep  France  busy  outside  of  Europe — he  favoured  French 
expansion  in  Tunis.  This  was  a  quick  way  of  alienating 
Italian  sympathy  from  the  Power  that  not  so  long  before 
had  helped  Italy  to  achieve  her  independence.1  1881  is 
the  date  of  the  Treaty  of  Bardo,  whereby  Tunis  was  given 
to  France;  and  in  1882  Italy  joined  Germany  and  Austria 
in  an  alliance  which  was  thus  made  Triple. 

This  Treaty,  although  ostensibly  concluded  "  for  the 
consolidation  of  European  peace,"  was  avowedly  anti- 
Russian;  Bismarck  was  aiming  solely  at  European  hege- 
mony; the  necessity  of  the  world- policy  that  William  II 
was  to  inaugurate  was  almost  unsuspected  by  him;  the 
Eastern  question  seemed  to  him  "  not  worth  the  bones 
of  a  Pomeranian  grenadier  " ;  what  more  dread  potential 
enemy  had  Germany  than  the  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  one  of 
whom,  Alexander  II,  had  cried:  "  Hands  off  !"  when,  only 
five  years  after  Sedan  (the  "French  Scare,"  1875),  Bis- 
marck threatened  to  give  a  resilient  France  her  definitive 
quietus  ?  Moreover,  had  not  Russia  come  forth  from  the 
Berlin  Congress  even  more  humiliated  than  France  ? 
That  Russia  was  suspicious  of  her  great  western  neigh- 

1  "  Prince  Bismarck,  twelve  years  after  Sadowa,  had  actually  given 
territory  to  Austria,  and  ...  he  asked  for  an  alliance  in  order  to 
cover  him  against  Russia."  M.  de  Blowitz:  "Prince  Bismarck  and 
German  Unification,"  The  Times,  August  3,  1898.  If,  ten  years  after 
Sedan,  Bismarck  had  given  European  territory  to  France,  instead  of 
hoarding  the  lands  he  had  stolen  from  her  in  1870,  the  history  of 
Europe  would  have  been  utterly  changed. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    53 

bour,  that  Alexander  II,  arbitrary  potentate  as  he  was, 
still  perceived  that  a  blighted  France,  even  though  that 
France  was  the  France  of  the  Marseillaise,  deprived  him 
of  a  potentially  useful  friend  in  Europe,  was  shown  by  a 
succession  of  little  unmistakable  indications,1  all  culmin- 
ating in  the  interesting  fact  of  the  decision  of  France  to 
lend  Russia  500,000,000  of  francs.  This  was  in  1888. 

Almost  twenty  years  had  passed  since  the  Franco- 
German  war;  ten  since  the  Treaty  of  Berlin.  That 
Treaty,  which  had  confirmed  German  hegemony,  had 
established  in  South-Eastern  Europe  a  series  of  small 
States,  left  by  Germany  to  shift  for  themselves  under  the 
vigilant  guardianship  of  Russia  and  Austria-Hungary, 
and  calculated,  in  the  German  Chancellor's  eyes,  to  absorb 
the  entire  attention  of  those  Powers.  Bismarck  believed 
that  he  had  crushed  and  completely  isolated  France,  and 
that  the  Eastern  Question  had  been  settled  for  a  genera- 
tion. What  he  had  really  done  was  to  render  an  alliance 
between  the  Tsar  and  the  Republic  inevitable,  and  to 
alienate  Russia  from  Austria-Hungary,  while  making  her 
the  friend  of  Italy ;  and  it  was  no  longer  Bismarck,  but  the 
spire  of  Strasbourg  cathedral  and  the  Balkans,  that 
dominated  European  politics.  Les  convenances  de  V Europe 
sont  le  droit,  said  the  Tsar  Alexander  to  Talleyrand  in 
1814  at  Vienna.  Bismarck  had  sought  to  substitute  for 
this  famous  formula  another :  My  will  is  the  law  of  Europe. 
In  reality  he  had  prepared  Agadir  and  Kirk-Kilisse. 

Meanwhile,  France,  which  had  gone  to  Tunis  in  1881, 
was  in  Tongking  in  1885.  England  was  watching  her  with 
jealous  eyes.  At  the  same  time  her  domestic  difficulties, 
notably  the  anti-republican  coalition  conspiracy  known 
as  Boulangism,  paralysed  her  energy,  and  compromised 

1  See  Ambassade  a  Paris  du  Baron  de  Mohrenheim  (1884-1898),  par 
Jules  Hansen.  Flaminarion. 


54  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

her  authority  in  Europe.  Bismarck  saw  no  reason  to 
complain  of  the  situation.  Now  and  then — as  in  the 
Schnoebele  affair  of  April  1887,  when  he  imprisoned  the 
police-commissioner  of  Pagny,  releasing  him  only  after 
eight  days — he  invented  a  frontier  incident  calculated  to 
remind  France  that  Germany  was  on  her  guard.  Simul- 
taneously, the  same  Bismarck  who  had  signed  an  anti- 
Russian  alliance  with  Austria  and  Italy  arranged  a  re- 
insurance pact  with  Russia.  The  tendency  of  Russia  to 
draw  nearer  to  France  doubtless  interfered  with  the  com- 
plete realization  of  the  Bismarckian  plan.  But  Bismarck 
never  considered  it  beyond  his  capacity  to  solve  a  problem 
of  that  kind.  He  was  engaged  upon  it  when  his  new 
master,  William  II,  abruptly  requested  him  to  resign, 
and  with  his  resignation  a  new  period  hi  European 
history  begins. 

All  that  was  before  1890.  The  Zeitgeist  was  to  grant 
William  II  less  than  ten  years  in  which  to  justify  his  drop- 
ping his  pilot.  The  year  1898  is  the  third  critical  date 
since  the  close  of  the  Franco- German  War.  The  German 
Emperor  had  broken  the  career  of  Bismarck,  but  he  had 
inherited  the  Bismarckian  policy.  That  he  might  pursue 
that  policy  in  his  own  way,  it  was  necessary  that  the  Tsar 
Alexander  should  disappear.  Alexander  died  only  in 
1894,  after  having  signed  a  defensive  military  alliance 
with  France  in  1892.  That  is  to  say,  the  fall  of  Bismarck 
had  unquestionably  hastened  the  completion  of  the  nego- 
tiations that  had  been  proceeding  for  some  five  years 
between  France  and  Russia.  But  the  young  Emperor, 
on  taking  office,  was  too  buoyantly  optimistic,  and  too 
keen-sighted,  to  concern  himself  over  the  conclusion  of  an 
alliance,  as  to  the  pacific  character  of  which  he  had  re- 
ceived the  most  reassuring  information.  While  France 
was  interpreting  that  pact  as  an  earnest  of  the  recovery 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    55 

of  Alsace-Lorraine,  William  II  well  knew  that  it  confirmed 
once  again  the  European  status  quo.  Relieved  of  all 
anxiety  on  that  score,  the  new  Master  looked  out  upon  a 
new  Germany:  a  Germany  increasing  in  wealth,  industry 
and  foreign  trade,  a  Germany  which,  under  the  protec- 
tionist system  applied  from  1880  to  1891,  had  grown  so 
rapidly,  so  miraculously  even,  that  Bismarck  had  hardly 
understood  the  first  syllable  of  the  new  economic  gospel 
which  he  had  himself  inspired.  Surveying  this  exhilara- 
ting spectacle,  and  beholding  the  German  acquisitions  in 
the  Cameroons  and  at  Samoa,  William  II  inaugurated  a 
new  era  for  which  he  was  to  find  the  formula  a  few  years 
later  in  his  famous  appeal  delivered  from  the  steps  of 
the  Bismarck  monument  at  Hamburg:  "  Our  future  is  on 
the  water.  The  more  the  Germans  go  upon  the  water 
the  better  will  it  be  for  us."  This  was  in  1901,  but  the 
date  of  the  first  German  naval  programme  is  1893.  In 
the  following  year  it  happened  that  a  mystical  youth 
became  Tsar  of  all  the  Russias,  and  in  1895,  at  the  opening 
of  the  Kiel  Canal,  a  ceremony  symbolizing  the  aspirations 
of  the  new  Germany,  French  ironclads  were  anchored  by 
the  side  of  Russian  men-of-war  in  German  waters.  The 
significance  of  this  demonstration  was  clear.  With  the 
accession  of  the  new  Tsar,  Nicholas  II,  the  pacific  charac- 
ter of  the  Franco-Russian  Alliance  was  so  emphasized 
that  its  political  raison  d'etre,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
European  balance  of  power,  was  stultified.  Nicholas  II, 
not  less  pacific,  humanitarian  even,  than  his  father, 
quickly  fell  under  the  commanding  personality  of  his 
plausible  and  fascinating  German  cousin.  The  Tsar 
became  the  creature  of  the  German  Emperor.  William  II, 
adroitly  using  the  Franco-Russian  Alliance  for  his  own 
imperial  German  ends,  was  for  a  time  the  silent  partner 
in  a  combination  including  the  French  Foreign  Minister, 


56  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

M.  Hanotaux,1  who  was  daily  multiplying  difficulties 
with  England  in  Africa  and  in  Asia.  The  French  Colonial 
Office  had  been  created  in  1894.  Vast  schemes  were 
broached  in  favour  of  a  Franco- Germane-Russian  entente 
calculated  to  isolate  England.  In  the  Far  East,  after  the 
Chino-Japanese  War,  the  strange  alliance  was,  for  the 
moment,  successful.  Under  the  pressure  of  the  three 
Powers,  Japan  was  constrained  to  tear  up  the  Treaty  of 
Shimonoseke;  she  began  to  perceive  the  advantages  of 
flinging  herself  into  the  arms  of  England.  After  the 
Jameson  Raid  (New  Year's  Day,  1896)  William  II 
despatched  to  President  Kruger  the  famous  telegram 
which  was  as  much  intended  to  lead  to  an  understanding 
with  France  as  satisfy  the  imperialistic  instincts  of  nascent 
Pan-Germanism.  Strasburg  and  Metz  seemed  to  have 
been  utterly  forgotten. 

Thus,  with  the  resignation  of  Bismarck  and  the  death  of 
Alexander  III,  a  new  movement  began  in  Europe.  That 
movement  was  to  culminate  in  the  removal  of  Russia  from 
her  European  spheres  of  influence,  and  her  exile  during  a 
protracted  period  in  Manchuria,  where  her  military  power 
was  eventually  to  be  shattered  at  Mukden  (February  to 
March,  1905).  Italy,  continually  instigated  to  enter  upon 
colonial  enterprises  wherever  she  might  risk  colliding  with 
England  or  with  France,  found  herself  in  1896  deploring 
the  slaughter  of  her  legions  at  Adowa.  France,  left  un- 
molested to  pursue  her  African  adventure,  was  being 
driven  daily,  almost  hourly,  along  the  fatal  path  leading 

1  The  reader  will  recall  (p.  32)  the  consternation  caused  in  France  by 
Count  Muravieff's  Circular  to  the  Powers  inviting  them  to  meet  in  a 
Congress  for  the  study  of  the  means  of  securing  to  the  world  the  benefits 
of  a  lasting  peace.  In  August  1898  La  Gazette  de  France,  in  an  article 
entitled  "From  Kiel  to  Disarmament,"  remarked  that  the  Republic 
had  become  "  the  miserable  maidservant  of  theEuropeanMonarchies." 
See  p.  61. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    57 

to  war  with  England.  She  awoke  in  July  1898  to  the 
tragic  moment  of  Fashoda,  when  Kitchener  and  Marchand 
stood  suddenly  at  bay  in  the  desert.  Great  Britain  had 
just  beheld  Manchuria  and  Port  Arthur  in  the  hands  of 
her  secular  enemy.  Thus,  by  1898,  Germany,  Bismarck 
and  William  II  had  manoeuvred  so  admirably  that,  while 
maintaining  intact  the  alh'ance  with  Austria  and  Italy, 
they  had  all  but  paralysed  the  Franco-Russian  Alliance, 
infuriated  Italy  against  France,  and  nearly  brought  on  a 
war  between  France  and  England.  These  results  had 
been  symbolized  in  three  events  of  world-wide  signifi- 
cance, which,  though  they  had  taken  place  in  succession, 
may  be  regarded,  from  the  point  of  view  of  historic  psy- 
chology, as  simultaneous.  The  results  of  German  policy 
from  1890  to  1898  were  Adowa,  Port  Arthur-Manchuria 
and  Fashoda.  But,  meanwhile,  beyond  the  boundaries 
of  Europe,  events  had  been  taking  place  that  did  not 
escape  the  notice  of  the  German  Emperor.  1898  was  also 
the  year  of  the  close  of  that  Spanish- American  war  which 
first  reminded  William  II  that  Pan-Germanism  had  other 
rivals  in  the  world  than  the  "  Yellow  Peril  ";  the  year  of 
the  annexation  of  Hawaii  by  the  United  States  and  the 
year  of  the  May  Day  of  Manila.  That  is  why  1898  is  a 
critical  year. 

Finally,  1898,  the  year  of  the  Austro-Russian  Agree- 
ment concerning  the  Balkans  (when  the  Powers  recognized 
the  "  superior  interest  "  of  Austria  and  Russia  in  the 
provinces  of  European  Turkey)  marks  the  moment  when 
Russia  first  began  to  realize  the  inconvenience  of  her  Far- 
Eastern  policy,  and  to  doubt  the  disinterestedness  of  her 
German  friends.  Dreaming  of  victories  in  Manchuria, 
she  was  forced  to  neglect  the  pursuit  of  her  traditional 
Panslavist  policy  in  the  Balkans.  She  was  obliged  to 
adopt  the  policy  of  the  pan-Germans.  Partially  paralysed 


58  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

in  Europe,  Russia  could  neither  actively  favour,  nor 
effectually  arrest,  the  ambitions  of  the  Balkan  States  to 
fling  the  Turks  across  the  Sea  of  Marmara,  and  to  extend 
their  boundaries  in  Macedonia  and  Thrace.  She  was  con- 
strained to  a  policy  of  marking  time.  Meanwhile  Ger- 
many, impelled  by  the  ever-increasing  momentum  of  her 
drang  nach  Osten,  was  assuring,  through  her  Austro- 
Hungarian  allies,  her  economic  preponderance  in  the 
Balkan  States ;  while,  benefiting  by  the  persistent  antago- 
nism of  Russia  and  England,  she  became  the  protector  of 
the  Turkish  Empire,  and  the  concessionaire  of  that  Bagh- 
dad Railway  which  was  intended  to  be  the  instrument  of 
the  establishment  of  her  protectorate  over  Asiatic  Turkey. 
Thus,  owing  to  Russia's  policy  in  the  Far  East,  and  owing 
to  the  reciprocal  jealousies  and  apprehensions  of  the 
Powers,  all  hope  of  settling  the  Eastern  Question  was  in- 
definitely postponed.  Bulgaria,  Servia  and  Montenegro 
were  left  to  work  out  their  national  salvation  alone,  and 
the  Macedonians  were  exposed  to  periodic  massacre. 
Just  as  Alsace-Lorraine  appeared  to  have  been  forgotten 
by  France,  so  the  small  Slav  States  seemed  to  have  been 
abandoned  by  the  Tsar.  Germany  had  apparently  con- 
trived to  stifle  the  Eastern  Question,  and  to  suppress  every 
influence,  direct  or  indirect,  likely  to  thwart  her  main 
objects :  the  maintenance  of  her  political  preponderance  in 
Western  Europe,  and  absorption  of  the  markets  of  the 
Middle  East.  But  throughout  this  period  the  Balkan 
nationalities  were  slowly  awakening  to  self-knowledge. 
Liberty,  national  rancour,  and  a  sense  of  responsibility 
were  transforming  them  into  self-reliant  Powers.  The 
evolution  did  not  escape  the  notice  of  good  observers;1 

1  The  most  remarkable  of  these  observers  was  the  author  of  a  book 
published  in  1905:  "  Une  Confederation  Orientale  comme.  Solution  de  la 
Question  d'Orient"  (Plon).  This  writer,  signing  himself  "A  Latin,'' 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    59 

but  who  could  foresee  that  within  a  period  of  only  four- 
teen years  the  sovereigns  of  Bulgaria,  Servia,  Greece  and 
Montenegro  were  to  cross  their  several  frontiers  at  the 
head  of  their  allied  armies,  "  imploring  the  benediction  of 
the  Almighty  on  their  New  Crusade  "x  against  the  Turk  ? 
But  it  is  not  easy  to  have  done  with  1898.  1898  meant 
more  even  than  this,  more  even  than  all  this.  Already 
the  period  of  civil  war  known  as  the  "  Dreyfus  Affair  " 
had  begun  in  France. 

"  We  recall  an  evening  in  January  1898,  at  the  Aurore.  Suddenly 
towards  eleven  o'clock  some  anarchists  rushed  in  with  an  improbable 

began  by  laying  down  the  principle  that  the  policy  of  imposing  re- 
forms upon  the  Turkish  Government  was,  at  its  best,  merely  a  pallia- 
tive, capable  of  prolonging  for  only  a  brief  period  the  agony  of  the 
Ottoman  regime.  At  a  moment  when  the  Servians,  the  Greeks  and 
the  Bulgarians  were  insidiously  intriguing,  or  savagely  fighting,  for  the 
mastery  in  Macedonia,  when,  moreover,  the  attitude  of  the  Great 
Powers,  assembled  round  the  bed  of  the  Hcmme  Malade,  was  that 
of  rival  heirs  waiting  to  rifle  the  treasures  of  a  dying  relative,  this 
astonishing  observer  argued  that  a  Balkan  League  (to  include  Rumania 
and  Greece),  in  which  the  several  States  should  sink  their  differences 
to  achieve  their  higher  hopes,  was  feasible.  He  proposed  that  the  new 
Federation  should  be  placed  under  the  Presidency  of  Italy,  and  he 
published  a  map  indicating  the  necessary  territorial  changes.  Read 
in  November  1912,  when  the  Servians  had  already  entered  Uskub, 
when  Greece  and  Bulgaria  were  at  Salonica,  and  when  the  Bulgarians 
were  all  but  in  sight  of  St.  Sophia — after  a  war  which  was,  to  be  sure, 
a  Russian  revenge  for  Austria's  seizure  of  Bosnia-Herzegovina,  but 
which  was,  at  the  same  time,  part  of  the  Italian  combinazione  of  the 
Tripolitan  Expedition — this  book  stood  forth,  among  the  studies  of 
the  last  twenty  years  on  the  Eastern  Question,  as  the  work  of  a  veritable 
prophet  and  seer. 

1  Telegram  of  the  King  of  Greece,  October  20,  1912,  to  the  Allied 
Sovereigns  of  the  Balkan  League.  It  should  immediately  be  noted  by 
the  reader  that  when  the  four  Balkan  Sovereigns  started  out  on  what 
they  were  pleased  to  call  their  "  New  Crusade,"  they  declared  it  to  be 
their  intention  not  to  undertake  any  territorial  conquest,  yet  Bulgaria 
and  Servia  had  already  signed,  seven  months  previously,  a  secret  treaty 
fixing  the  ultimate  partition  of  Macedonia.  Cf.  note  1,  p.  327;  and 
note  2,  p.  155.  See  also  note  1,  p.  185. 


60  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

piece  of  news.  They  had  just  invaded  a  public  meeting  held  by  the 
nationalists  and  had  captured  the  platform,  tearing  down  the  decora- 
tions of  the  tricolour  flags.  They  were  young  men,  who  laughed  as 
they  told  the  story  of  the  assault,  and  we  laughed  too,  little  dreaming 
that  one  day,  twelve  years  later,  partially  because  of  this  exploit 
regarded  by  us  as  a  triumph,  and  because  of  our  laughter,  a  French 
soldier  would  fling  the  flag  of  his  regiment  into  the  latrines.  What 
were  our  thoughts  ?  Merely  this :  So  the  nationalist  mob  oppressing 
us  can  be  beaten  into  shape;  it  can  be  hustled  and  dispersed.  Action 
was  then  the  great  thing  !  Clemenceau,  who  had  been  sent  for; 
Clemenceau,  perfect  leader  of  the  band  and  always  gay,  laughed  with 
the  rest  of  us,  and  his  laughter  was  even  more  wonderful  than  ours."1 

Confronting  thus  a  triumphant  and  optimistic  Germany 
were  three  Powers  which,  in  1898,  had  just  publicly  under- 
gone national  humiliation.  Russia  and  Germany  alone 
seemed  to  be  happy  nations;  but  Russia,  lured  eastward 
out  of  Europe,  partially  by  German  wiles,  was  already 
doomed,  and  Germany  alone  seemed  likely  to  reap  the 
fruit  of  her  intelligent  diplomatic  action.  In  reality  she 
had  overstepped  the  mark. 

Italy,  England  and  France,  colonial  rivals,  almost  bitter 
foes,  had  nevertheless  one  thing  in  common :  all  three  had 
been  unfortunate ;  all  three  were  in  need  of  friends.  With 
the  departure  from  the  Quai  d'Orsay  of  M.  Hanotaux, 
who  had  practically  paralysed  the  Dual  Alliance  by  his 
compliance  with  the  schemes  suggested  by  the  German 
Emperor  to  the  Tsar,  the  new  minister  for  Foreign  Affairs, 
the  Pyrenean  M.  Delcasse,  was  free  to  adopt  a  new  policy. 
M.  Cambon,  who  had  been  appointed  ambassador  in 
London  in  September  1898,  was  to  treat  with  Lord  Salis- 

1  "  Apologie  pour  notre  passe,"  in  Liittes  et  Prollemes,  by  Daniel 
Halevy,  pp.  59-60.  M.  Halevy  suggests  plausibly  that  even  the 
Affaire  was  ingeniously  created  by  Germany  in  order  to  compromise 
the  French  general -staff.  (See  pp.  32-35  of  his  book.)  The  reasons 
he  gives  are  not  conclusive,  but  they  are  impressive.  They  are  im- 
pressive, above  all,  to  one  who,  like  the  present  writer,  was  an  eye  and 
ear  witness  of  every  episode  of  the  affair  from  the  trial  of  Zola  to  the 
tragic  August  at  Rennes. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    61 

bury  in  the  name  of  M.  Delcasse  for  the  settlement  of  the 
Fashoda  crisis.  M.  Barrere,  meanwhile,  in  December 
1897,  had  arrived  as  French  ambassador  in  Rome.  In 
November  1898,  he  succeeded  in  arranging  a  treaty  of 
commerce,  which  indicated  that  the  two  "  Latin  sisters  " 
were  awakening  to  the  fact  that  the  Bismarckian  policy 
of  the  galliphobe  Italian  statesman  Crispi  was  not  neces- 
sarily in  the  interests  of  either  Power;  and  this  treaty  was 
the  first  step  in  that  magnificent  Mediterranean  policy 
pursued  by  M.  Delcasse,  out  of  which  was  to  come  the 
Anglo-French  Entente,  England's  definitive  establishment 
in  Egypt,  the  French  Protectorate  over  Morocco,  the 
Italian  seizure  of  Tripoli  (which  France  had  acquiesced  in 
in  1901),  and  the  Europe  of  1910,  1911  and  1912. 

"  I  should  be  sorry  to  leave  office,"  said  M.  Delcass6 
to  M.  Victor  Berard,  early  in  November  1898,  "before  I 
had  established  a  good  understanding  with  England."1 
M.  Cambon,  moreover,  went  to  London  resolved  to 
negotiate.2  Just  before  the  departure  of  M.  Hanotaux 
from  office,  Germany  had  made  a  last  desperate  effort 
to  come  to  terms  with  France  for  a  kind  of  defensive 
colonial  and  commercial  alliance,  implying  reciprocal  ex- 
change of  territory,  the  whole  arrangement  being  directed 
against  England.  This  plot  had  failed  owing  to  the 
double  crisis  of  Fashoda  and  the  Dreyfus  Affair.3  The 

1  Revue  de  Paris,  July  1,  1905. 

2  M.  de  Blowitz,  Times  Correspondence,  November  16,  1898:   "I 
consider  him  ...  a  man  who  is  desirous  of  putting  an  end  to  the 
tension  now  existing  between  the  two  nations  which  border  on  the 
Channel.  .  .  .     He  will  go  to  his  post  with  his  eyes  open,  and  ...  he 
will  begin  in  a  liberal  spirit  the  pourparlers  intended  to  bring  about 
satisfactory  solutions." 

3  On  this  critical  episode  of  Germany's  proposal  to  M.  Hanotaux  to 
enter  on  negotiations  with  regard  to  Africa  directed  against  England, 
see  Fachoda,  by  M.  G.  Hanotaux  (Flammarion) ;  France  et  Attemagne, 
by  M.  Rene  Pinon  (Perrin) ;  De  la  Paix  de  Franc/ort  a  la  Conference 


62  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Wilhelmstrasse,  M.  Hanotaux  gone,  perceived,  with  its 
usual  celerity,  the  signs  of  the  change  in  the  European 
situation.  Lord  Salisbury  still  remained  pro- German, 
anti-French.  England  was  one  of  the  Powers  in  need 
of  friends.  There  was  public  proof  of  it.  Mr.  Chamber- 
lain was  acclaiming  the  idea  of  an  Anglo-Saxon  Alliance 
(Birmingham  Speech,  May  13,  1898).  Italy  might,  for 
the  moment,  be  left  on  one  side,  to  be  dealt  with  later 
on,  and  Russia  could  be  counted  on  blindly  to  continue 
her  fatal  march  towards  the  abysmal  Orient.  "  Seizing 
the  event,"  Germany  induced  England,  at  this  juncture, 
to  renounce  secretly  and  tentatively  her  policy  of  "  splen- 
did isolation,"  and  to  sign  that  mysterious  arrangement 
with  regard  to  the  future  of  the  Portuguese  possessions 
in  Africa,  which  subsequent,  and  equally  secret,  treaties, 
signed  in  Lisbon  in  1904,  were  to  nullify.1 

Thus,  while  Russia  was  dragging  France  towards  the 
disaster  of  Mukden,  February  24  to  March  10,  1905, 
Germany  turned  with  a  candid  face  to  the  people  whose 
sea-power  her  own  growing  navy  was  already  beginning 
to  menace,  and  sought  to  convince  them  of  her  unalloyed 
sincerity.  So  long  as  Lord  Salisbury  remained  at  the 
head  of  the  Foreign  Office,  France  would  strive  in  vain 
to  thwart  Germany's  action.  For  that  statesman,  even 
for  his  august  Queen,  France  and  Russia  were  the  hered- 

d1  Algesiras,  by  M.  Andre  Mevil  (Plon) ;  Le  Coup  d'Agadir,  by  M.  Pierre 
Albin  (Alcan),  and  Kiel  et  Tanger,  by  M.  Charles  Maurras  (Nouvelle 
Librairie  Nationale).  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Count  Miinster's  diplomacy 
in  Paris  was  thwarted  by  the  revelations  of  M.  de  Blowitz,  who  ren- 
dered England  and  France  in  1898  hardly  less  effective  service  than 
during  the  famous  "  French  scare  "  of  1875. 

1  Already  in  December  1900,  King  Charles  of  Portugal  had  been 
formally  received  on  board  Admiral  Rawson's  flagship,  and  had  drunk 
the  health  of  the  "friendly  and  allied  nation."  This  was  one  of  the 
first  events  that  revealed  to  Europe  the  new  spirit  animating  the 
British  Foreign  Office. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    63 

itary  enemies.  German  policy,  in  driving  Russia  into 
the  East,  had  enhanced  England's  suspicion  of  Russia. 
England  regarded  opting  for  Germany  as  a  less  dangerous 
choice  than  making  up  with  Russia;  moreover,  she  was 
the  deadly  foe  of  Russia's  ally.  And  thus  it  was  that 
Germany  could  still  continue  to  develop  to  their  logical 
limits  all  the  ramifications  of  the  Bismarckian  policy ;  she 
could  still  play  to  her  heart's  content  the  part  of  the 
honest  broker,  while,  under  another  disguise,  she  was 
actively  planting  her  flag  throughout  the  world.1  But  in 
October  1899  the  Transvaal  War  broke  out,  and  for 
two  and  a  half  years  England's  sinews  were  wrung  in  the 
heroic  duel.  Now  at  last  she  opened  her  eyes  to  those 
perils  of  isolation  as  to  which  Mr.  Chamberlain  had 
warned  her  in  1898;  for  her  enemies  might,  for  argument's 
sake,  almost  class  her  among  the  "  dying  nations  "  on 
whose  territory,  in  the  words  of  her  ironic  prime-minister, 
Lord  Salisbury  (May  4,  1898).  the  living  nations  were 
bound  to  encroach.  To  China,  Turkey,  Spain,  the  France 
of  the  Panama  Scandals,  the  Dreyfus  Case  and  Fashoda, 
was  now  added  the  England  of  Ladysmith.  Lord  Salis- 
bury disappeared  from  the  Foreign  Office,  being  suc- 
ceeded by  Lord  Lansdowne,  in  October  1900.  A  few 

1  Prince  Radziwill,  who  represented  the  German  Emperor  at  the 
funeral  of  M.  Felix  Faure,  was  interviewed  on  February  26,  1899,  by 
the  Paris  Liberte,  and  made  the  following  amusing,  but  suggestive, 
statement  on  the  Anglo-German  arrangement  just  concluded :  "  Nothing 
in  this  arrangement  is  in  opposition  to  a  rapprochement  between  my 
country  and  yours,  a  rapprochement  desired  by  all  minds  free  from 
passion.  As  for  England,  it  does  not  seem  to  me  that,  now  that 
Germany  has  become  one  of  her  greatest  commercial  rivals,  a  com- 
plete agreement  can  ever  be  secured  between  two  countries  whose 
interests  are  so  different.  But  there  is  another  country  against  which 
the  Continental  Powers  should  indeed  come  to  an  understanding  for 
the  organization  of  their  economic  defence.  There  is  the  United 
States,  whose  pretensions  and  riches  are  becoming  a  danger  for  us  all." 


64  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

days  later  Queen  Victoria  died  and  was  succeeded  by 
King  Edward,1  who  was  immediately  greeted  by  French 
public  opinion  as  a  sovereign  "  capable  of  doing  much  to 
better  the  relations  between  the  two  countries."2  At  all 
events  the  tension  between  France  and  England  could 
last  no  longer  without  a  war.  Something  had  to  be  done. 
For  both  England  and  France  the  hour  was  ripe  for 

1  "King  Edward,"  said  Mr.  Balfour  in  the  House  of  Commons  on 
May  11,  1910,  "  was  a  great  monarch.     He  did  that  which  no  Minister, 
no  Cabinet,  no  Ambassadors,  neither  treaties,  nor  protocols,  nor  under- 
standings, which  no  debates,  no  banquets,  no  speeches,  were  able  to 
perform.     He,  by  his  personality  alone,  brought  home  to  the  minds  of 
millions  on  the  Continent,  as  nothing  that  we  could  have  done  could 
have  brought  it  home  to  them,  the  friendly  feelings  of  the  country 
over  which  King  Edward  ruled." 

2  Let  the  reader  recall  (p.  61)  M.  Delcasse's  words  in  1898.     Here  is 
what  he  said  a  few  weeks  later  publicly  (January  23, 1899),  in  the  course 
of  a  debate  on  Foreign  Affairs :  "  My  reason,  my  patriotism,  tells  me 
that  if  in  the  last  few  months  I  have  been  able  to  render  any  service 
.  .  .  the  service  which  I  consider  the  greatest  is  the  prevention  of  a 
conflict  which  would  be  a  calamity  for  the  world.  .  .  .     Now  as  ever, 
calm  and  dignified,  governed  by  her  essential  interests,  France  is 
ready  to  consider  and  discuss  everything  with  the  resolution  to  claim 
nothing  but  her  rights,  and  the  hope  that  those  rights  will  be  recog- 
nized, but  with  the  conviction  that  she  is  under  nobody's  orders.  .  .  . 
I  am  no  pessimist.     It  is  impossible  to  be  so,  when  one  knows  what 
France  is,  and  that,  under  the  scum  which  certain  persons  find  an 
abominable  pleasure  in  agitating  (the  Dreyfus  Affair),  there  lives  and 
labours  a  people  pre-eminently  honest  and  sane,  as  thrifty  as  it  is 
hard-working,  which  is  alive  to  the  fact  that  its  destiny  is  not  fulfilled, 
which  is  amenable  to  noble  sentiments,  and  of  which  you  can  expect 
anything  if  you  take  care  to  keep  its  vision  lifted  towards  an  ideal  of 
justice  and  high  civilization.     It  is,  nevertheless,  true  that  profound 
transformations  are  in  preparation  from  one  end  of  the  world  to  the 
other,  and  France  must  not  be  weakened.     Hence  the  need  of  a  vigi- 
lant and  thoughtful  policy  which  distinguishes  between  our  interests 
and  classifies  them  according  to  their  importance,  which  leaves  nothing 
to  chance,  and  does  not  squander  its  efforts.     To  this  policy  I  ask  for 
the  reflecting  adhesion  of  the  country."     These  grave  words,  luminous 
with  prophetic  fire,  read  to-day,  after  the  coup  d'Agadir,  assume  a 
singular  significance. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    65 

meditation  over  their  individual  national  problems. 
They  stood,  for  an  instant,  silent  and  face  to  face,  blinking 
in  the  glare  of  the  new  light  that  illuminated  the  dread 
cross-roads  of  Fashoda  and  Ladysmith.1  Simultaneously 
they  saw  the  sardonic  grin,  and  heard  the  triumphal 
chuckle,  of  Germany.  France  and  England  were  face 
to  face  like  birds  in  a  cockpit,  while  Europe,  under 
German  leadership,  was  fastening  their  spurs,  and  im- 
patient to  see  them  fight  to  the  death.  Then  suddenly 
they  both  raised  their  heads  and  moved  back  to  the  fence. 
They  had  decided  not  to  fight,  and  the  face  of  European 
things  was  transformed. 

On  February  2,  1903,  The  Times  published  from  the  pen 
of  the  present  writer  (who  was  then  one  of  its  European- 
correspondents)  the  following  telegram  dated  Madrid, 
February  1.  This  message,  printed  a  year  before  the 
conclusion  of  the  Anglo-French  Agreement  of  1904,  was 
the  first  public  mention  in  Europe  of  negotiations  which, 
when  thus  revealed,  were  regarded  as  utterly  incredible  and 
ridiculed  for  several  months  by  the  whole  European  press. 

"  The  prudent  reserve  of  the  Spanish  Government  during  the  present 
crisis  in  Morocco  has  been  noted  by  attentive  observers,  to  whom  it 
has  caused  some  surprise.  .  .  .  When  Senor  Abarzuza  became  Minister 
for  Foreign  Affairs  in  the  Silvela  Cabinet,  he  lost  no  time  in  seeking  to 
obtain  assurances  from  France  and  England  to  the  effect  that  for  the 

1  England's  situation  at  the  beginning  of  1900  was  analyzed  in  a 
telegram  to  The  Times  by  M.  de  Blowitz,  who  reminded  his  readers 
that  "  pourparlers  were  then  going  on  between  at  least  three  of  the 
Continental  Powers  to  force  England  to  enter  into  negotiations  for  the 
settlement  of  the  questions  still  pending  by  talcing  advantage  of  her 
present  embarrassments.'"  In  that  prophetic  article  M.  de  Blowitz 
forestalled  the  necessity  of  just  such  a  general  liquidation  of  Franco- 
British  differences  as  was  destined  to  be  achieved  four  years  later, 
but  which  seemed  at  the  time  to  be  beyond  the  limits  of  the  wildest 
divination.  The  article  passed  unnoticed  by  the  great  public.  It 
remains,  however,  one  of  the  most  astonishing  instances  which  the 
columns  of  The  Times  can  show  of  this  great  journalist's  perspicacity. 

F 


66  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

present  no  intervention  was  contemplated.  He  was  given  to  under- 
stand that  an  agreement  had  been  come  to  between  these  two  Powers 
for  the  maintenance,  at  all  events  for  the  present,  of  the  status  quo  in 
Morocco.  This  tranquillizing  assurance,  strictly  warranted,  so  far  as 
it  went,  by  what  had  taken  place  between  the  two  Powers,  told,  how- 
ever, only  half  the  truth.  The  real  facts  are  such  that  the  Spanish 
Government  can  hardly  look  upon  them  with  unalloyed  satisfaction. 

"  What  the  Spanish  Government  had  not  entirely  understood  is 
that,  in  spite  of  the  assurances  given  to  Spain  as  regards  her  North 
African  possessions  and  the  neutralization  of  Tangiers,  Prance  and 
England  had  thought  of  solving  the  whole  question  of  Morocco  with- 
out necessarily  waiting  for  her  good  offices.  Towards  the  end  of  last 
summer  M.  Delcasse,  through  his  ambassador  in  London,  made  overtures 
to  Lord  Lansdowne  for  the  complete  and  detailed  settlement  of  the  whole 
Moroccan  question.  At  that  time  M.  Delcasse  'presented  to  Lord  Lans- 
downe, with  a  loyalty  which  would  appear  to  have  been  appreciated  by  the 
British  Government,  certain  complete,  decisive  and  business-like  pro- 
posals (des  propositions  fermes)  which  if  accepted  at  the  time  would 
have  had,  if  I  may  say  so,  not  merely  North  African,  but  European 
consequences.  The  essential  characteristic  of  these  proposals  was  that 
France  and  England  should  settle  the  Moroccan  question  in  connexion 
with  the  question  of  Egypt.  In  compensation  for  French  official  recog- 
nition of  the  British  occupation  of  Egypt,  France  was  to  be  allowed  a 
free  hand  in  dealing  with  Moroccan  territory  save  on  the  North  African 
coast-line.  If  I  am  correctly  informed  this  highly  interesting  bargain 
was  not  unfavourably  received  by  Lord  Lansdowne.  But,  occupied 
at  the  time  by  South  African  affairs,  and  (when  reminded  later  on) 
by  Venezuela,  the  British  Government  requested  to  be  allowed  to 
postpone  serious  and  consecutive  pourparlers  on  Morocco  until  after 
the  definitive  arrangement  of  these  two  affairs.  .  .  .  M.  Delcassffs 
scheme,  which  still  remains  virtually  unanswered,  was  nothing  more 
nor  less  than  a  proposal  to  England  to  leave  France  alone  to  secure  the 
suzerainty  of  Morocco  when  and  how  she  cared  to  do  so  by  pacific  penetra- 
tion. It  was  part  and  parcel  of  the  whole  Mediterranean  policy  of  France, 
the  corollary  of  the  Franco-Italian  arrangement  concerning  Tripoli.  And 
the  most  ardent  partisans  of  French  hegemony  in  the  '  Latin '  sea  really 
need  not  have  complained." 

VIII 

This  grouping  of  the  salient  and  essential  facts  of  the 
period  between  the  Franco- German  War  and  the  Anglo- 
French  Entente  of  1904  "  round  the  critical  dates  "  of 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    67 

that  period  will  have  justified  the  statement  that  "  the 
examination  of  the  international  play  of  European 
events,"  during  those  thirty  odd  years,  "  reveals,  in  those 
events,  a  logical,  apparently  fatal  sequence."  It  gives, 
moreover,  new  significance  to  the  utterances  of  Count 
Berchtold  when  he  so  suggestively  summed  up  the  present 
political  aspect  of  the  world-situation : — 

"  Until  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century  (the  critical  date  of  1898) " 
the  grouping  of  the  Powers  inaugurated  by  the  Triplice  merely  ap- 
peared to  be  a  clearly  defined  pattern.  Since  then  ...  a  closely 
woven  network  of  agreements  and  ententes  has  been  formed  between 
the  Powers  belonging  to  the  same  groups  or  to  different  groups,  a  fact 
which  profoundly  complicates  the  international  situation." 

This  is  a  truth  which  the  foregoing  pages  have  amply 
illustrated.  The  demonstration  will  be  indirectly,  and 
less  systematically,  enforced  by  the  detailed  considera- 
tion of  the  events  that  have  taken  place  since  the  opening 
of  the  new  era  marked  by  the  Entente  between  France 
and  England,  the  veritable  significance  of  which  was 
speedily  defined  by  the  organization  of  the  Triple  Entente. 
Meanwhile,  it  is  evident  that  one  can  no  longer  chronicle 
the  doings  of  any  individual  nation  without  writing,  at 
the  same  time,  the  history  of  all  the  other  peoples.  Such 
is  the  modern  dovetailing  of  the  nations  that  national 
interests  have  become  matters  of  international  concern: 
national  facts  and  events  have  become  international  facts 
and  events;  "nationalities  "  have  been  transformed  into 
"  internationalities." 

Obviously  the  word  "  nationalities  "  is  here  used  in  a 
special  arbitrary  sense.  It  means  something  very  different 
from  what  it  meant  fifty  years  ago  on  the  lips  of  a  Louis 
Napoleon,  and  from  what  it  means  to-day  to  the  Mace- 
donians. It  seemed,  indeed,  to  Napoleon  III  that 
"  national  interests  "  had  become  "  matters  of  inter- 


68  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

national  concern,"  but  he  gave  to  his  own  formula  a 
dangerous  philosophic  sense;  and  Louis  Napoleon's  case 
is  typical. 

It  should  never  be  forgotten  that  the  defeat  of  France 
in  1 870  was  less  the  consequence  of  the  inefficiency  of  her 
military  power  than  the  logical  conclusion  of  the  perilous 
foreign  policy  of  Napoleon  III.  The  Emperor  was  a 
generous  ideologue,  and  his  foreign  policy  was  in  sublime 
and  absurd  opposition  to  the  best  French  national  pre- 
cedents and  traditions.  His  passionate  longing  to  sub- 
stitute for  the  modus  vivendi  of  the  treaties  of  1813  a  more 
scientific  and  more  logical  state  of  international  relations, 
to  revise,  in  a  word,  the  map  of  Europe  by  grouping 
peoples  according  to  racial  or  linguistic  affinities,  was  one 
of  the  most  characteristically  doctrinaire  notions  that 
ever  clouded  a  clear  French  brain.  It  was  at  the  same 
time  an  absurdly  pedantic  and  impracticable  principle 
of  diplomatic  action,  which  put  its  author  in  the  light  of 
an  international  meddler,  who,  even  when  most  disin- 
terested, laid  himself  open  to  the  charge  of  double-dealing. 
It  was  also  un-French,  in  the  sense  of  being,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  French  interests,  an  antinational  policy. 
It  was  lacking  in  realism.  The  substance  of  Napo- 
leon Ill's  policy  was  metaphysic  fiction,  not  the  tangible 
stuff  of  contemporary  European  fact  and  circumstance. 
And  thus,  fanatically  devoted  as  he  was  to  the  principle 
of  nationalities,  the  upshot  of  his  policy  was  the  ironic 
reductio  ad  dbsurdum  that  the  one  "  nationality  "  whose 
interests  he  left  unsafeguarded  was  France  itself.  He 
was  too  keenly  alive  to  the  woes  of  the  Poles,  the  Italians, 
the  Hungarians,  to  have  time  to  consider  the  positive 
interests  of  the  French.  The  result  was  Sedan  !  It  was 
left  to  the  Third  Republic  to  restore  the  French  tradition, 
to  re-establish  French  authority  in  Europe,  and  to  re- 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS   69 

affirm  a  national  policy  which  could  be  linked  with  the 
national  policy  of  the  Old  Regime,  from  Henri  IV  and 
Richelieu  to  the  Republican  armies  of  Napoleon  I.1 
Difficult  as  the  task  was  bound  to  be.  it  did  not  dismay 
those  to  whose  lot  it  first  fell;  and  the  restoration  under 
the  Third  Republic  of  the  authority  of  France  in  the 
counsels  of  Europe — notwithstanding  the  dangerous  lapses 
of  certain  of  its  leaders  acting  in  the  humanitarian  spirit 
of  Napoleon  III — is  one  of  the  most  impressive  accidents 
that  history  can  show. 

Napoleon  Ill's  pathetic  blunder  sprang,  no  doubt,  from 
an  ideal  no  less  magnanimous  than  that  of  the  Emperor 
Marcus  Aurelius,  who  dreamed  of  "a  polity  in  which 
there  is  the  same  law  for  all,  a  polity  administered  with 
regard  to  the  equal  rights  and  equal  freedom  of  a  people." 

1  "The  Third  Republic,  after  the  war  of  1870  and  the  Commune  of 
1871,  found  the  3  per  cent,  rente  between  50  and  51.  It  had  to 
repair  disasters  such  as  had  never  befallen  any  nation.  It  had  to 
pay  a  ransom,  the  enormous  amount  of  which  astounded  even  those 
who  had  imposed  it.  It  had  to  contract  colossal  loans  to  defray  the 
costs  of  the  war,  and  to  re-establish  the  country,  for,  after  1870,  France* 
la  noble  blessee,  as  she  was  called  by  M.  Thiers  (whose  memory  should 
be  imperishable,  for  he  was  literally  the  'liberator  of  the  territory'), 
was  altogether  ruined.  It  had  to  borrow  both  for  war  and  for  peace, 
for  public  works  and  for  the  colonies.  It  had  to  establish  heavy  taxes, 
and  in  spite  of  all  these  burdens  it  raised  the  credit  of  the  State  to  a 
point  that  had  been  unknown  under  the  Restoration,  under  the  July 
Monarchy,  or  under  the  Second  Empire.  The  present  quotations  of 
the  3  per  cent,  rentes,  92  fr.  50,  may  be  contrasted  with  the  highest 
points  86-10,  quoted  under  the  Restoration,  the  highest,  86-35,  quoted 
under  the  July  Monarchy,  the  highest  86,  quoted  under  the  Second 
Empire.  The  Third  Republic  can  say  and  show  that  our  3  per  cent. 
rente,  in  spite  of  the  disasters  of  1870,  is  now  negotiated  at  from  12 
to  13  francs  higher  than  German  and  Russian  rente,  and  that  the 
credit  of  the  conquered  country  is  superior  to  that  of  its  victorious 
foe.  ...  La  rente  Franfaise,  c*est  la  signature  de  la  France  qui 
circule.' ' 

Alfred  Neymarck:  "  Les  119  Ans  de  la  Rente  Fran9aise  "  (U Informa- 
tion, August  21,  1913). 


70  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

But  Napoleon  III,  Marcus  Aurelius,  Mr.  Gladstone,  even 
Mr.  Hay,  who  declared  that  American  diplomacy  had 
but  two  controlling  maxims,  the  Golden  Rule  and  the 
Open  Door,  were  rather  mystics  and  philosophers  in 
office  than  practical  statesmen.  They  had  what  Presi- 
dent Butler  of  Columbia  University  has  recently  called 
"  the  international  mind  " :  "  that  habit  of  thinking  of 
foreign  relations  and  business,  and  that  habit  of  dealing 
with  them,  which  regard  the  several  nations  of  the  civilized 
world  as  friendly  and  co-operating  equals  in  aiding  the 
progress  of  civilization,  in  developing  commerce  and  in- 
dustry, and  in  spreading  enlightenment  and  culture 
through  the  world."1  Such  a  habit  as  this  may  look 
desirable  on  paper,  but  it  is  pernicious  in  practice.  It 
seems  to  be  an  idiosyncrasy  of  the  "  international  mind  " 
to  take  an  altruistic  pleasure  in  sacrificing  its  own  patriotic 
impulses  to  the  prejudices  of  its  neighbours.  Its  prin- 
ciple of  action  is  that  of  the  Golden  Rule,  and  its  notion 
of  duty  may  be  summed  up  in  the  famous  exclamation  of 
Professor  Freeman:  "Perish  the  interests  of  England, 
perish  our  dominion  in  India,  rather  than  that  we  should 
strike  one  blow  or  speak  one  word  on  behalf  of  the  wrong 
against  the  right."  The  folly  of  the  man  who  would 
apply  an  "  international  mind  "  to  the  problems  of 
diplomacy  has  been  indicated  by  Spinoza.  He  too  was 
a  philosopher,  but  he  was  well  aware  that  to  the  his- 
torian human  passions,  love,  hate,  anger,  envy,  vanity, 
pity,  and  all  the  other  "  movements  of  the  soul,"  are  not 
virtues  or  vices,  but  merely  "  properties,"  as  heat  and 
cold  are  properties  of  the  air. 

1  Address  of  Nicholas  Murray  Butler,  as  President  of  the  Lake 
Mohonk  Conference  on  International  Arbitration,  May  15,  1912. 
President  Butler  has  outdone  Cardinal  Newman,  who  invented  the 
phrase,  "  the  European  mind." 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    71 

"  Little  stable  (minime  stabile),"  says  the  author  of  the  Ethic*,  "  will 
be  that  State  whose  safety  depends  on  individual  honesty,  and  whose 
business  can  be  carried  on  solely  on  condition  of  its  being  entrusted  to 
honest  hands.  For  a  State  to  last,  public  business  must  be  so  arranged 
that  those  who  are  responsible,  whether  they  be  actuated  by  reason 
or  by  passion,  cannot  be  tempted  to  act  from  bad  motives  or  to  do 
wrong.  For  it  matters  little,  as  regards  the  security  of  the  State, 
what  the  motives  of  rulers  may  be  in  the  successful  administration  of 
affairs.  Liberty  or  strength  of  soul  are  the  virtue  of  private  persons ; 
the  virtue  of  the  State  is  security.  Finally,  inasmuch  as  men,  whether 
barbarian  or  civilized,  unite  everywhere  in  some  form  of  civil  society, 
it  follows  that  we  must  not  seek  for  the  principles  and  natural  founda- 
tions of  the  State  in  the  maxims  of  reason,  but  that  we  must  deduce 
them  from  the  common  characteristics  and  condition  of  human  nature 
as  a  whole  (ex  hominum  communi  natura  sen  conditione)."1 

The  successful  reappearance  of  France  in  the  counsels 
of  Europe  was  partially  due  to  the  fact  that,  after  Sedan, 
she  ceased  for  a  time  to  cultivate  an  "  international 
mind,"  and  that  her  reappearance  coincided  with  the 
opening  of  the  modern  era  of  "  international  dovetailing  " 
to  which  allusion  has  been  made.  England,  one  of  the 
greatest  of  the  Powers,  sought  for  a  long  period  to  ignore 
the  beginnings  of  this  epoch,  but  was  finally  forced  to 
recognize  the  altered  conditions  of  the  times. 

Up  to  the  Franco-German  War,  up  to  forty  years  ago,2 
England  possessed  the  monopoly  of  trade  and  commerce 
throughout  the  world.  She  could  afford  to  indulge  her- 
self spasmodically  in  unrealistic,  even  in  sentimental  and 

1  Tractatus  Politicus.    Cap.  I,  6,  7.     Spinoza,  Opera  Posthuma,  1667, 
pp.  269,  270.     Cf.  note  1,  p.  306.    The  angel  Nectaire  in  M.  Anatole 
France's  Revdte  des  Anges  (Calmann  Levy,  p.  246)  was  of  the  opinion 
of  Spinoza:  "De  cour  les  vices  qui  peuvent  perdre  un  homme  d'etat, 
la  vertu  est  la  plus  funeste:  elle  pousse  au  crime.     Pour  travailler 
utiliment  au  bonheur  des  hommes,  il  faut  Stre  superieur  a  toute 
morale." 

2  It   may,  however,  be   admitted   with   Gen.    Homer   Lea   that 
Prussia's    seizure   of   Schleswig-Holstein    "  ended    the   period    when 
England  gave  down  the  law  to  Europe."      The  Day  of  the  Saxon, 
p.  1GO. 


72  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

humanitarian  policies.  She  was  free  to  bide  her  time 
for  action,  to  conform  her  foreign  policy  to  "  Liberal  " 
ideas,  even  to  the  Golden  Rule  if  she  liked,  while  she 
was  filling  the  coffers  of  Lombard  Street.  She  could 
intervene  or  not  in  Continental  affairs,  as  a  disinterested 
idealism,  or  an  interested  Protestant  propagandism, 
might  impel  her,1  and,  having  eased  her  conscience,  she 
could  retire  in  splendid  isolation  into  her  island  fastness, 
with  the  proud  sense  of  accumulated  and  accumulating 
wealth,  and  of  duty  done.  Premonitory  rumblings  from 
the  nether  world  which  had  been  formed  of  the  new  social 
and  economic  layers  deposited  by  her  own  unmolested 
unrivalled  industrial  activity  had  not  yet  reached  her 
ears.  For  British  statesmen  the  problem  of  foreign  policy 
was  still  comparatively  simple:  while  her  world- wide 
hegemony  went  unchallenged,  England  had  solely  to  con- 
cern herself  with  the  maintenance  of  the  European  balance 
of  power.  This  had  uniformly  been  her  object,  and  it 
is  an  ideal  that  had  hitherto  implied  meddling,  or  non- 
meddling,  as  the  case  might  be.  Henri  IV  had  backed 
her  against  Philip  II ;  the  German  States  and  Spain  were 
her  alhes  against  Louis  XIV;  all  Europe  aided,  abetted 
and  applauded  her  at  Waterloo.  If  Napoleon  III  had 
accepted  her  assistance,  Prussia  would  never  have  con- 
structed a  Kiel  Canal  on  Danish  soil ;  Germany  would  not 
have  fatally  discovered  that  her  future  was  on  the  water, 
and  the  dream  of  Bismarck  to  render  German  unity 
(Einheit)  as  real  as  German  union  (Einigung)  would  not 
now  be  approximately  realized.  Finally,  it  should  not 
be  forgotten  that  in  1875  an  opportune  hint  from  Queen 
Victoria  and  the  Tsar  had  sent  Bismarck  back  growling 
to  his  kennel. 

1  John  Stuart  Mill  would  have    said,    "  A   concern  for   her   own 
security."     See  his  essay,  1857,  A  Few  Words  on  Non-intervention. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    73 

The  two  apparently  opposed  policies  which  commanded 
the  allegiance  of  England  in  the  nineteenth  century — 
that  of  Sir  Robert  Peel's  last  speech  in  1850  arguing  in 
favour  of  complete  indifference  to  Continental  complica- 
tions, and  that  of  Mr.  Gladstone  in  his  speech  of  1877, 
when  the  great  ideologue  exclaimed:  "Sir,  there  were 
other  days  when  England  was  the  hope  of  freedom  "x — 
these  policies  were  not,  after  all,  as  reciprocally  hostile 
as  they  might  seem ;  for,  as  long  as  the  sea-girt  imperial 
island,  master  of  the  trade-routes,  remained  unassailable, 
as  long  as  England  continued  to  be  without  a  rival  among 
the  world-carriers,  so  long  could  she  offer  herself  the 
luxury  of  choosing  between  action  or  spectatorship,  be- 
tween intervention  or  non-intervention,  according  to  her 
mood  of  the  moment.  If  this  aristocratic  privilege  is 
now  lost  to  her,  probably  for  ever;  if,  as  Lord  Rose- 
bery  said,  in  his  speech  at  the  University  of  Glasgow 
(January  12,  1912),  "For  good  or  for  evil,  we  are  now 
embraced  in  the  midst  of  the  Continental  system,  and 
that  I  regard  as  perhaps  the  gravest  fact  in  the  later 
portion  of  my  life  " ;  if,  in  a  word,  England,  the  champion 
of  freedom,  is  no  longer  herself  free  to  choose,  if  she  is 
deprived  of  the  faculty  of  will,  the  right  of  decision;  if 
she  is  so  entangled  in  the  network  of  European  forces 
that  she  is  living  deterministically  under  a  regime  of 
vague  liabilities,  she  must,  of  course,  draw  the  necessary 
conclusions,  and  stoically  bear  the  consequences.  But 
she  must  first,  and  above  all,  face  the  fact — the  facts  ! — 
and  not  hypocritically  ignore  it — or  them. 

Fourteen  years  before  Lord  Rosebery,  on  May  13,  1898, 
Mr.  Chamberlain  had  stated  with  frankness,  in  a  remark- 
able speech  extolling  an  Anglo-Saxon  Alliance,  the  exact 
situation  of  England. 

1  See  The  Future  of  England,  by  Hon.  George  Peel,  p.  114. 


74  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

"  Since  the  Crimean  War,"  he  said,  "  nearly  fifty  years  ago,  the 
policy  of  this  country  has  been  a  policy  of  strict  isolation.  We  have 
had  no  allies — I  am  afraid  we  have  had  no  friends.  —  A  new  situation 
has  arisen.  All  the  powerful  States  of  Europe  have  made  alliances 
and  ...  we  are  liable  to  be  confronted  at  any  moment  with  a  combina- 
tion of  Great  Powers  so  powerful  that  not  even  the  most  extreme 
politician  would  be  able  to  contemplate  it  without  a  certain  sense  of 
uneasiness.  We  stand  alone." 

In  1898,  however,  the  British  Government  was  think- 
ing, not  of  Germany — with  whom  she  was  signing  secret 
agreements — nor  yet  of  France,  but  of  Russia,  who  had 
already  seized  Port  Arthur.  It  seems  like  the  most 
ancient  of  "  ancient  history  "  to  read  the  terms  in  which 
Mr.  Goschen,  speaking  on  July  22,  1898,  on  the  Navy 
Estimates,  justified  his  remarks  for  supplemental  credits. 
"  It  is  impossible,"  he  said,  "  to  conceal  the  fact  that  it  is 
the  action  of  Russia,  and  the  programme  on  which  she  has 
entered,  which  is  the  cause  of  our  strengthening  our  fleet 
and  taking  parallel  action  with  her." 

It  is  not  unimportant  to  note  that  France  was  sceptical 
as  to  the  pretext  put  forward  by  Mr.  Goschen  for  increasing 
the  strength  of  the  British  Navy.  The  United  States  had 
recently  become  an  oceanic  power  by  the  annexation  of 
Hawaii,  and  the  Spanish- American  War  had  been  fertile  in 
lessons  for  the  admiralties  of  all  countries.  The  Journal 
des  Debats  raised  the  question  whether  Mr.  Goschen's 
haste  was  not  to  be  explained  by  his  prudent  desire  to 
forestall  a  morrow  of  international  complications  in  which 
the  United  States  might  feel  called  on  to  take  an  aggres- 
sive part.  At  all  events,  Mr.  Goschen's  initiative  marks 
a  date  in  the  British  policy  of  steady  progression  in  naval 
outlay.  It  was  not  long  before  the  menace  of  German 
naval  expansion  rendered  the  movement  chronic,  and 
sooner  still  the  destruction  of  the  Russian  Navy  was  to 
leave  Great  Britain  to  face  but  one  hostile  fleet  in  the 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    75 

North  Sea.  On  March  18,  1912,  the  First  Lord  of  the 
Admiralty,  Mr.  Churchill,  made  to  Germany  a  perfectly 
frank  though  irritatingly  ingenious  proposal  for  arresting 
the  keen  and  costly  naval  rivalry  between  the  two 
countries.  He  showed  Germany  how  she  might  co- 
operate with  England  in  a  plan  involving  more  than  a 
merely  platonic  demonstration  in  favour  of  disarmament. 
"  If  you  will  slow  down  in  1913,"  he  said  to  Germany, 
"  we  will  slow  down  too ;  if  you  decide  not  to  build  the 
three  ships  now  contemplated  you  will  automatically 
wipe  out  no  fewer  than  five  British  potential  super- 
Dreadnoughts  !"  Germany  retorted  by  passing  a  Navy 
Bill  increasing  the  naval  force  cruising  in  the  North  Sea 
from  seventeen  fully-manned  battleships  to  twenty-five, 
with  sixteen  in  reserve.  Consequently  Mr.  Churchill  took 
the  immediate  action  expected  of  him.  Speaking  on  May 
15,  at  a  dinner  of  the  Worshipful  Company  of  Shipwrights, 
he  said,  amid  loud  cheers:  "  It  will  be  my  duty  to  come 
again  to  Parliament  this  year  for  men,  money  and 
material."  And  the  First  Lord  thereupon  expounded 
the  consequences  of  the  policy  of  the  "  concentration  of 
the  British  fleet  in  decisive  theatres  "  (necessitated  by 
the  stubborn  efforts  of  Germany  to  shatter  British  sea- 
power),  namely,  the  growth,  in  the  great  Dominions  over 
sea,  of  an  effective  naval  force  capable  of  guarding  and 
patrolling  the  British  Empire  while  England  herself  main- 
tains a  sea-supremacy  against  all  comers  at  the  decisive 
point. 

These  developments  shed  a  new  light  on  the  inconveni- 
ences of  that  policy  of  altruistically  indiscriminate  inter- 
ference in  world  affairs  which  doctrinaire  liberalism  has 
always  inspired.  These  inconveniences  were  clearly 
stated  in  January  1912,  in  a  speech  by  Sir  Edward  Grey 
at  the  village  of  North  Sunderland.  He  said: — 


76  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

"  Let  me  put  you  on  your  guard  against  people  who,  as  I  think,  are 
very  bad  advisers  with  regard  to  foreign  policy.  There  is  a  certain 
section,  I  have  no  doubt,  in  the  Liberal  Party  which  think  we  do  not 
interfere  nearly  enough,  especially  in  certain  parts  of  the  world,  in  Asia. 
Mongolia,  I  think,  was  the  last  selected  as  a  part  in  which  we  should 
take  an  active  interest.  Believe  me,  if  you  are  going  to  pursue  a  foreign 
policy  of  that  kind,  and  this  country  is  going  to  interfere  actively  in 
Central  Asian  questions  far  beyond  our  own  Indian  frontier,  you  are 
going  to  incur,  not  only  the  very  heavy  naval  expenditure  which  we 
have  already,  but  a  vastly  increased  military  expenditure  as  well ;  and 
the  people  who  press  upon  me  a  different  foreign  policy  to  that  which  is 
now  being  pursued  are,  it  seems  to  me,  people  who  are  really  advocating 
as  a  foreign  policy  the  maximum  of  interference  in  the  affairs  of  the 
world  at  large  and  the  minimum  of  friendship;  because  the  policy,  if  it 
were  carried  out,  would  soon  leave  us  without  a  friend  in  Europe. 
(Cheers.)  Now,  believe  me,  that  is  the  most  futile  and  expensive  policy 
that  this  country  could  adopt,  and  I  consider  it  from  every  point  of 
view,  whether  it  be  the  point  of  view  of  the  party  or  the  point  of  view  of 
national  interest — I  consider  it  the  duty,  I  would  say,  of  any  Govern- 
ment, whether  Liberal  or  Conservative,  to  resist  a  policy  of  that  kind." 

On  the  other  hand,  both  the  Secretary  for  War  and  the 
Marquis  of  Crewe  acknowledged,  in  a  debate  on  Foreign 
and  Military  Policy  in  the  House  of  Lords  on  May  15, 
1912,  that  "  the  policy  of  splendid  isolation  was  over  "; 
but  they  demurred  to  the  idea  of  a  "  close  alliance  with 
great  European  Powers,"  they  repudiated  the  principle  of 
"  entangling  military  alliances."  British  ministers  have 
still,  perhaps,  a  few  months  ahead  of  them  in  which  to 
continue  to  affirm  their  scepticism  as  to  the  utility  of  a 
military  convention  with  France.  But  the  time  is  not  far 
distant  when,  in  spite  of  the  aid  given  by  the  Dominions, 
they  will  have  to  eat  their  words,  and  when  the  English 
people — realizing,  at  last,  that  the  Territorial  Force  is 
merely  a  make-believe  army1 — will  bring  them  to  book 
on  the  charge  of  neglect  of  duty. 

1 "  The  Territorial  Force  is  a  failure  in  discipline,  a  failure  in  numbers, 
a  failure  in  equipment,  and  a  failure  in  energy."  Speech  of  Lord 
Roberts,  November  27,  1912,  at  the  annual  dinner  of  the  Association  of 
Men  of  Kent  and  Kentish  Men.  Admiral  Tirpitz's  alleged  declaration 


STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    77 


IX 


"  1870,"  "  1878,"  "  1890,"  "  1898,"  "  1904,"  "  1911," 
"  1912." 

The  Dismemberment  of  France;  the  Berlin  Congress; 
the  Fall  of  Bismarck;  Adowa,  Port  Arthur,  Fashoda; 

on  February  7,  1913,  that  Germany  could  safely  accept  the  relative 
proportion  (16  to  10)  between  British  and  German  Dreadnoughts 
proposed  by  Mr.  Churchill  in  March,  1912,  was  made  simultaneously 
with  the  proposal  for  the  increase  of  the  German  aerial  fleet  (cf.  pp.  271, 
272),  and  just  before  the  announcement  of  the  plan  for  the  augmentation 
of  the  German  army  until  it  numbers  865,000  men!  The  reply  of 
France  was  immediate, — restoration  of  the  Three  Years'  Military  Service 
system  so  recklessly  abandoned  in  1905 — yet  England  still  hesitates 
to  look  facts  in  the  face.  The  most  plausible  form  as  yet  given  to  her 
reasons  is  the  excellent  little  book  by  Mr.  J.  A.  Spender,  The  Foundations 
of  British  Policy.  Cf.  pp.  207,  208.  The  feverish  naval  and  military 
activity  throughout  Europe  at  the  present  hour  is  almost  unprecedented. 
After  Germany's  lead,  so  quickly  followed  by  France,  Russia  has  taken 
measures  which  were  required  to  meet  the  formidable  increase  of  the 
forces  of  the  Triple  Alliance,  and  which  will  bring  the  permanent  peace 
effectives  up  to  1,760,000  men.  More  important  still  is  the  Russian 
naval  programme,  in  virtue  of  which  by  1915  she  will  have  four  dread- 
noughts, in  active  service  in  the  Baltic,  to  be  followed  in  1916  or  1917 
by  four  others,  while  in  the  Black  Sea  she  will  possess  a  marked  superi- 
ority over  all  the  other  Powers.  The  significance  of  these  facts  in  con- 
nexion with  the  problem  of  the  balance  of  power  in  the  Mediterranean 
and  the  North  Sea,  and  with  the  general  question  of  peace,  cannot  be 
ignored.  They  are  the  more  important  as,  by  1920,  the  Austro-Italian 
fleet  (provided  Austria  and  Italy  shall  not  already  have  come  to  blows  !) 
will  number  twenty  or  twenty-one  dreadnoughts  to  France's  seventeen. 
It  is,  indeed,  highly  desirable  that  France  should  add  four  or  five  units 
to  the  quota  fixed  in  its  naval  programme  of  1912.  It  is  certain,  as 
M.  de  Thomasson  has  pointed  out  (see  his  article  in  the  Journal  des 
Debats  of  July  4,  1914:  "  Les  Grandes  Echeances  Militaires  de  191o- 
1920  "),  that  during  the  next  five  or  six  years  Time  will  work  for  the 
Triple  Entente,  in  so  far  as  purely  material,  as  distinguished  from 
moral,  considerations  axe  concerned.  England,  however,  must  not  too 
long  defer  taking  to  heart  the  words  of  Lord  Rosebery,  which  are  far 
truer  to-day  than  they  were  even  only  three  years  ago:  "  For  good  or 
for  evil,  we  are  now  embraced  in  the  midst  of  the  Continental  system  " 
(p.  64).  In  order  to  revert  to  "isolation"'  and  call  it  "splendid," 


78  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

the  Dreyfus  Affair;  the  Anglo-French  Entente;  Agadir; 
Kirk-Kilisse :  these  are  the  dates  and  names  on  the  links 
of  the  fatal  chain  which  Bismarck  forged  and  which,  at 
the  present  hour,  has  been  stretched  almost  to  the 
breaking  point.  Eight  years  after  Bismarck's  resignation, 
his  successor,  William  II,  could  legitimately  believe  that 
he  was  about  to  found  an  Imperial  Germany  greater  than 
the  Empire  of  the  First  Napoleon.  Less  than  five  years 
later  all  his  hopes  were  dashed.  By  the  Anglo-French 
Entente  a  new  period  was  opened  in  Europe.  Without 
losing  a  minute  Germany  began  the  assault  of  that 
Entente.  The  Agreement  had  been  signed  on  the  eighth 
of  April,  1904.  On  the  eve  of  April  Fool's  Day,  just  a 
year  later,  and  ten  days  after  the  adoption  in  France  of 
the  Two  Years'  Military  Service  Bill,  the  German  Em- 
peror landed  at  Tangiers.  Yet  in  May  1902,  when  the 
possibility  of  an  Anglo-French  Entente  appeared  to  be 
the  dream  of  a  madman,  the  Chancellor  of  the  German 
Empire,  Count  von  Bulow,  had  said  to  M.  Andre  Tardieu 
in  Berlin : — 

"  Peace  is  assured ;  we  have  the  benefit  of  it,  and  we  shall  always  be 
with  those  who  defend  it,  against  those  who  trouble  it. ...  As  regards 
Morocco,  where  our  interests  are  less  than  in  China,  I  do  not  consider 
that  question  as  one  likely  so  very  soon  to  interest  our  diplomacy.  We 
have  no  bay-window  frontage  on  the  Mediterranean. . . .  We  pursue  no 
personal  policy  there."1 

England  would  have  to  possess  twice  as  large  a  navy  as  she  possesses 
now,  and  an  army  like  that  of  France.  In  default  of  this  system  of 
defence  she  must  look  facts  in  the  face,  and,  as  the  military  corre- 
spondent of  The  Times  puts  it  ("The Doctrine  of  Defence,"  The  Times, 
July  21, 1914),  take  her  share  of  alliances  and  friendships,  by  becoming 
a  good  European,  and  by  maintaining  the  balance  of  power.  England 
has  to  be  "  prepared,  at  one  average  moment,  for  the  enemy  at  his 
selected  moment."  This  is  a  problem  to  the  solution  of  which  she  will 
shortly  let  herself  be  assisted  by  acceptance  of  the  practical  overtures 
of  the  friends  of  the  Triple  Entente. 
1  Le  Figaro,  May  30,  1902. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    79 

From  1905  to  the  present  hour  Germany  has  had  but  one 
dream,  one  aim.     Prince  Bulow,  indeed,  stated  publicly  in 
1906,  with  a  Bismarckian  frankness,  that  the  sole  object  of 
German  policy  was  to  supplement  the  Entente  Cordiale  by 
an  equally  cordial  understanding  between  Germany  and 
England.     The  Deutsche  Revue  published,  in  September  of 
that  year,  just  after  the  German  Emperor  and  King 
Edward  had  met  at  Friedrichshof,  an  article  unquestion- 
ably inspired  by  the  Imperial  Chancellor,  in  which,  after 
resuscitating  the  legend  that  "  the  traditions  of  the  Del- 
casse  policy  were  still  at  work  with  undiminished  force  in 
French  diplomacy — a  policy  of  which  the  object  is  to  hem 
in  Germany  diplomatically,  with  the  help  of  England, 
Russia  and  other  States,"  the  writer  gave  the  following 
menacing  description  of  England's  alternatives:   "To- 
wards Germany  England  has  only  the  choice  between 
the  policy  which  might  easily  become  disastrous,  of  an 
Anglo-French  counterpoise,  and  that  of  including  Ger- 
many within  the  circle  of  her  friendship."    When  Sir 
Edward  Grey  failed  to  take  the  hint,  when  England  re- 
fused to  modify  its  relations  with  France,  "  whether  by 
addition  or  subtraction,"  as  The  Times  put  it,1  Prince 
Billow  drew  the  logical  conclusion :  he  stuck  to  the  pro- 
gramme that  he  had  published  in  the  Deutsche  Revue,  and 
strove  more  fanatically  than  ever  to  destroy  the  Entente 
Cordiale  by  a  policy  of  alternating  intimidation  and  bland- 
ishment.   Germany,  ever  since,  has  been  butting  about  the 
European  corrida  like  a  maddened  bull,  seeking  in  vain  to 
reach  and  to  toss  the  French  toreador  who  waves  before 
her  the  Union  Jack.     It  is  superfluous  to  recall  the  vicissi- 
tudes of  a  sport  marked  by  such  "  events  "  as  the  fall  of 
M.  Delcasse,  the  Conference  of  Algeciras,  Casablanca.    The 
consequences  of  Germany's  action  are  alone  important. 
What   has   become   patent   to   everyone   to-day   was 
1  Leading  article,  September  5,  1906. 


80  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

obvious  to  professional  observers  in  1906:  the  fall  of 
M.  Delcasse,  the  sacrifice  of  the  French  Foreign  Minister 
by  his  colleagues  to  the  German  Moloch,  was  an  event 
bound  to  bring  home  to  the  most  indifferent  of  French- 
men certain  realities  of  their  international  situation ;  and 
consequent  prolonged  reflection  on  those  realities,  coupled 
with  the  growing  dissatisfaction  aroused  by  the  tyranny 
of  the  radical  regime,  could  not  fail  to  determine  a  revival 
of  the  French  national  spirit.  In  1906  it  was  clear  that 
however  mobile  the  French  temperament  was,  however 
pusillanimously  reluctant  the  Republican  Government 
might  be  to  allow  diplomatic  incidents  to  degenerate  into 
war,  however  profoundly  the  French  people  seemed  to 
have  forgotten  Alsace-Lorraine,  however  scandalously  the 
quarrels  of  the  agora,  the  squabbles  of  the  political  sects, 
the  backbiting  and  vituperation  of  the  press,  were  pre- 
occupying Frenchmen  to  the  neglect  of  so  many  of  their 
great  national  interests,  there  were  certain  things  that 
French  national  pride  could  not  be  expected  to  tolerate. 
A  period  of  what  the  French  call  recueillement,  of  silent 
meditation  that  quickly  became  articulate,  assuming  the 
sanest  forms  of  self-criticism,  marked  the  inevitable  con- 
version of  the  French  soul.  While  foreign  observers 
beheld  only  a  France  torn  by  domestic  factions,  quarrel- 
ling over  the  expulsion  of  monks  and  nuns,  and  over  the 
separation  of  the  Church  and  the  State;  a  Republic  in 
which  the  rebellion  of  5,000  civil  servants  (the  Postmen's 
Strike)  seemed  to  be  menacing  the  very  existence  of  the 
Republican  regime ;  a  society  in  which  whole  communities 
of  peaceful  wine-growers  seemed  to  have  gone  suddenly 
as  mad  as  Dionysiac  revellers ;  France  was  recovering  the 
sense  of  her  national  integrity.  She  was  beginning  to 
float  on  the  high  tide  of  one  of  those  miraculous  moral 
"  resurgences  "  peculiar  to  the  soil  that  has  given  birth  to 
Vercingetorix,  St.  Louis,  Joan  of  Arc  and  Gambetta. 


BOOK  II 


BOOK  II 

THE  French  domestic  crises,  the  ensuing  National 
Reaction,1  and  the  more  recent  British  crisis,  the 
solution  of  which  the  world  is  now  witnessing,  have  been 
the  necessary  condition  of  Germany's  agitation — of  her 
peculiar  aggressive  policy,  and  now  of  her  provisionally 
more  prudent,  but  not  less  dangerous,  manifestations — 
during  the  period  extending  from  Boulangism  to  the  fall 
of  M.  Delcasse  and  the  arrival  of  the  "  Panther  "  at 
Agadir;  and  from  the  Franco-German  Convention  of 
November  4,  1911,  to  the  present  ambiguous  hour. 


During  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  after  the 
Franco-German  War  it  was  taken  for  granted  by  Euro- 
pean statesmen,  whether  British,  German,  Russian  or 
Italian,  that  the  French  Republic  was  an  unstable  Govern- 
ment. The  conviction  that  anarchy  was  a  parasite  of 
French  Republicanism  became  what  the  mathematicians 
call  a  function  of  the  foreign  policy  of  all  the  Great 
Powers.2 

1  The  idea  expressed  in  the  phrase,  "  The  moral  resurgence  of  con- 
temporary France,"  has  been  formulated  by  M.  Etienne  Rey  perhaps 
even  more  accurately  in  the  title  of  his  book :  La  Renaissance  deFOrgueil 
Francais" — "The  Revival  of  French  Self-Respect." 

3  The  study  of  the  Memoirs  of  Prince  von  Hohenlohe,  of  51.  de 
Gontaut-Biron's  Ma  Mission  a  Berlin,  and  of  the  Memoirs  of  Bismarck, 
reveals  the  vigilant  activity  of  Bismarck  in  furthering  the  establishment 

83 


84  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

The  influence  of  French  home  politics  on  French  policy 
from  Jules  Ferry  to  M.  Caillaux  has  been  frequently  noted, 
and  often  contested.  The  proofs  of  that  influence  are, 
however,  innumerable.  These  proofs  are  so  genuine  that 
it  is  impossible  to  interpret  the  last  forty  years  of  Euro- 
pean history  without  a  preliminary  effort  to  understand 
the  nature  of  the  more  important  questions  which,  during 
that  period,  have  occupied  the  attention  of  French  poli- 
ticians and  the  French  public.  Even  Lord  Salisbury 
might  have  come  to  terms  with  France  and  Russia  in 
1887-1888 — and  England  would  thereby  have  chosen  of 
her  own  free  will,  and  for  purely  political,  diplomatic 
motives,  a  path  into  which  vital  necessity  drove  her  fifteen 
years  later — if  it  had  not  been  for  the  perils  and  uncer- 
tainty of  the  moment  in  Paris.  In  October  1887  (the 
date  of  the  first  Russian  entente  being  August,  1891) 
Baron  de  Mohrenheim,  Russian  ambassador  in  Paris, 
wrote  to  his  friend,  M.  Jules  Hansen :  "  I  have  reminded 
you  a  thousand  times  that  without  greater  governmental 
stability  all  the  present  plans  would  be  compromised. 
Take  it  definitely  to  heart,  once  for  all :  il  y  a  France  el 
France.  I  have  never  ceased  saying  this  everywhere,  so 
that  my  conscience,  at  all  events,  is  clear."1  The  fall  of 

of  the  Republic  in  Prance,  the  form  of  government  which  he  regarded  as 
the  least  dangerous  for  Imperial  Germany.  M.  Henri  Galli  has  ex- 
cellently summarized  in  his  Gambetta  et  Alsace  Lorraine  (Plon,  1911) 
this  long  tale  of  relentless  intrigue,  bluff,  and  blackmail  of  which  the 
German  Chancellor  was  the  author,  with  the  complicity  of  a  large 
number  of  Frenchmen  always  ready,  by  party-spirit,  to  weaken  the 
authority  of  their  country  when  it  is  governed  by  their  political  foes. 
In  working  so  assiduously  for  the  consolidation  of  the  Republic,  how- 
ever, Prince  Bismarck  wrecked  Germany's  interests.  He  fancied  the 
Republic  synonymous  with  Anarchy.  He  helped  it  to  become  the 
most  stable  state  in  Europe.  See,  in  this  connexion,  p.  157,  and  note  1. 
1  Ambassade  a  Paris  du  Baron  de  Mohrenheim  (1884-1898).  By  Jules 
ii aiiM-u.  p.  68. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    85 

Jules  Ferry,  the  fall  of  M.  Delcasse,  the  fall  of  M.  Pichon, 
are  examples  of  events,  the  sole  interest  of  which  is  that 
they  illustrate  the  singular  incapacity  of  the  French 
politician  to  subordinate  party  passions  to  the  general 
interests  of  his  country.  That  France,  the  Third  Re- 
public, in  spite  of  the  pretension  of  the  foreigner  to  meddle 
in  French  affairs,  and  in  spite  of  the  complaisance  with 
which  certain  Frenchmen  have  now  and  then  abetted  him 
in  his  incredible  machinations,  should  not  only  have  sur- 
vived longer  than  any  of  the  regimes  immediately  pre- 
ceding it,  but  should  have  become  perhaps  the  most 
stable  and  conservative  State  in  Europe,  is  one  of  the 
happiest  accidents  of  history.  From  Boulangism  through 
the  Panama  Scandal  to  the  Dreyfus  Case,  the  Republic 
has  repeatedly  appeared  to  outsiders  to  be  doomed  to  a 
speedy  end.  The  Real  France^  has  almost  invariably 
escaped  the  notice  of  the  average  well-informed  German, 
Englishman  or  American.  The  world- wide  misconcep- 
tion with  regard  to  the  significance  of  French  domestic 
policy,  and  the  singular  influence  of  French  home  policy 
upon  French  foreign  policy,  make  it  necessary  to  study 
in  some  detail  the  political  development  of  the  Third 
Republic ;  to  survey  the  ground  as  it  was  before  the  con- 
tinual blows  of  the  Nibelungen  picks  finally  released  the 
subterranean  current  of  French  patriotism. 


II 

Among  the  domestic  problems  that  dominated  French 
political  life  for  almost  an  entire  generation,  and  often 
diverted  the  attention  of  French  politicians  from  foreign 
questions,  that  of  the  relations  bet  ween' the  State  and  the 

1  Title  of  a  remarkable  book  by  Mr.  Laurence  Jerrold  (John  Lane, 
1911). 


86  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Catholic  Church  was,  perhaps,  the  most  inveterately  ab- 
sorbing. During  the  crisis  of  the  Dreyfus  Case  this 
problem  became  for  the  Republic  a  matter  of  vital  interest. 

The  events  that  occurred  in  France  from  1903  to  1907 
in  connexion  with  the  dissolution  of  the  religious  orders, 
the  expulsion  of  monks  and  nuns,  the  abolition  of  the 
Concordat  established  in  1801,  and  the  readjustment  of 
the  relations  between  Catholicism  and  the  State  were  a 
matter  of  astonishment  to  the  rest  of  the  world.  Yet 
these  events,  culminating  in  the  separation  of  the  Churches 
and  the  State,  were  produced  by  no  sudden  outburst  of 
anti-clerical  passion :  they  were  a  logical  incident  in  the 
development  of  French  society.  Instead  of  being  a  sign 
of  moral  decadence  and  social  ruin,  they  were  a  proof  not 
only  of  the  stability  of  Republican  institutions,  but  also 
of  the  Republic's  right  to  claim  legitimate  heirship  to 
the  great  regimes  preceding  it:  the  whole  history  of 
France  has  been  a  steady  effort  of  secularization. 

The  Republic  was,  in  a  sense,  an  accident,  but  it  was  a 
necessary  and  inevitable  one.  After  the  fall  of  the  Em- 
pire a  Republican  governmental  form  was  alone  possible. 
But  its  durability  was  problematic.  The  survivors  of  the 
older  regimes  thronged  political  life  ;  pretenders  and 
"  saviours  of  society  "  abounded.  The  old  political 
parties  were  all  eager  for  office,  and  each  had  its  special 
nostrum  for  the  cure  of  the  alleged  maladies  of  the  body- 
politic.  Their  agents  still  held  high  and  responsible 
positions  in  the  French  Administration.  The  bench,  for 
instance,  was  honeycombed  with  them.  The  Army  was 
crowded  with  officers  who  had  served  another  regime  too 
loyally  to  feel  themselves  at  home  in  a  Republic.  After 
the  debacle  the  responsibility  for  the  re-organization  of 
French  society  fell  upon  a  handful  of  disinterested 
patriots  convinced  that  a  Republican  form  was  the  least 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    87 

distasteful  to  the  nation,  and  the  only  one  practical, 
given  the  mutually  warring  interests  of  the  rival  political 
parties.  Theirs  was  a  Republican  President  not  from 
conviction,  but  by  the  force  of  things  and  of  his  political 
sense.  Round  him,  in  spite  of  their  suspicion  of  him, 
rallied  the  Republicans  by  conviction.  Politically,  no 
other  coalition  was  possible.  But  the  Republic,  which 
had  thus  managed  to  escape  strangling  in  its  cradle,  was 
beset  throughout  its  infancy  by  the  same  quarrelsome 
foes  whose  reciprocal  envy  and  ambitions  had  been  the 
sole  reason  of  its  surviving.  To  the  Republican  body- 
guard that  watched  over  the  child  fell  the  duty  of  re- 
organizing the  whole  of  French  society.  The  political 
part  of  their  task  was  achieved — inadequately — in  the 
Constitution  of  1875,  under  which  Frenchmen  are  still 
living,  and  which  preserved  the  old  Napoleonic  social 
scaffolding,  although  it  added  fresh  beams  to  fortify  and 
unite  the  political  and  administrative  functions.1  So 
admirable  was  the  new  machine  that  a  mere  handful  of 
officials  could  run  it.  But  this  task  accomplished,  it 
remained  first  to  choose  the  handful;  secondly,  to  organize 
national  nurseries  of  functionaries  knowing  their  Re- 
publican business.  The  real  history  of  France  and  the 
line  of  its  growth  during  the  last  thirty-five  years  of 
Republican  government  has  been  that  of  the  squabble 

1  The  "origins  of  contemporary  France"  are  really  buried  in  the 
Old  Regime.  The  historian  of  the  Political  and  Administrative 
Institutions  of  France,  M.  Paul  Viollet,  says  admirably:  "  Notre  notion 
de  1'etat  omnipotent,  est,  a  bien  prendre,  1'instinct  dirigeant  de  1'ancien 
regime  erige  en  systeme.  L'etat  moderne  n'est  autre  chose  que  le  roi 
des  derniers  siecles  qui  continue  triomphalement  son  labeur  acharne, 
etouffant  toutes  libertes  locales,  nivelant  sans  relaches."  And  again: 
"  La  noblesse  et  la  royaute  ont  rouge,  sans  se  lasser  jamais,  le  droit 
primitif.  Et,  sous  nos  yeux,  1'Etat  moderne  continue  ce  lent  travail 
des  siecles."  (See  Les  Communes  Francoises  au  Moyen  Age.  Klinck- 
sieck.  Paris,  1900,  p.  12.) 


88  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

between  the  Republican  crew  in  office  and  the  Royalist, 
Imperialist  or  other  gangs  out  of  office. 

Now,  the  effort  to  man  the  French  administrative 
machine  with  trusty  Republicans  could  not  go  on  with- 
out friction.  It  meant  both  cashiering  of  upright  old 
officials,  as  in  the  operation  known  as  "  the  purification 
of  the  magistracy,"  and  the  creating,  by  school  legisla- 
tion, of  a  Republican  youth  and  electorate,  free  from  the 
bias  of  the  loyalties  of  the  former  generations.  The 
Catholic  Church  could  either  immensely  facilitate  or 
seriously  hamper  this  process.  What  part  did  it  choose 
to  play  ? 

By  the  Concordat,  and  by  the  Organic  Articles  which 
the  First  Consul  regarded  as  merely  the  application  of 
his  convention  with  the  Pope,  the  Central  Administration 
held  the  French  clergy  in  leash.  They  were  functionaries 
of  the  State.  The  high  officials  (the  Bishops)  could  vir- 
tually be  chosen  by  the  State,  the  Pope  merely  conferring 
canonical  authority  on  the  elect  of  the  Civil  Power;  and 
although  the  Bishops  chose  the  parish  priests,  the  choice 
had  to  be  confirmed  by  the  State.  The  Bishops  were 
obliged  to  swear  obedience  and  fidelity  to  the  Govern- 
ment, and  to  promise  "  to  have  no  intelligence,  to  assist 
at  no  council,  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  any  league, 
either  in  France  or  abroad,  contrary  to  the  public  peace." 
Furthermore,  they  were  pledged  to  inform  the  central 
authority  if  they  learned  of  any  scheme  concocted  to  its 
prejudice.  This  oath,  imposed  upon  the  minor  clergy, 
absorbed  them  also  into  the  magnificent  system  of  official- 
dom with  which  the  First  Consul  thought  effectively  to 
police  French  society.  In  return  for  the  extraordinary 
services  thus  conceded  by  the  Vatican,  France  agreed  to 
ensure  her  ecclesiastical  agents  "  a  proper  stipend."  The 
Organic  Articles  tightened  the  Church's  bonds,  inter- 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    89 

dieting  all  publication  of  Papal  brief  or  encyclical  in 
France  without  Government  authority;  forbidding  the 
Bishops  to  meet  in  general  assembly;  forcing  them  to 
obtain  Government  permission  if  they  desired  to  leave 
their  dioceses.  On  the  slightest  pretext  of  rebellion  the 
State  could  bring  the  Bishops  to  book  and  punish  them. 
In  a  word,  it  was  a  state  of  servility  that  was  in  reality 
an  humiliation  for  the  Church,  though  not  honestly 
regretted  by  it,  since  it  was  a  step  on  the  way  leading  to 
complete  absorption  of  the  civil  authority. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Concordat,  at  the  outset,  put 
the  French  Administration  on  a  solid  basis.  In  fact, 
when  the  Third  Republic  was  founded  the  Concordat  was 
the  chief  trump  it  held,  if  not  an  absolutely  necessary - 
condition  of  success.  Republican  statesmen  knew  this, 
and  one  after  another  the  Opportunist  leaders,  from  Ferry 
and  Gambetta  to  Freycinet  and  Rouvier,  rejected  the  im- 
politic proposals  of  the  radicals  for  abrogation  of  the  Con- 
cordat, and  the  suppression  of  the  Embassy  at  the  Vatican. 
They  were  well  aware  that  such  a  policy  would  deprive 
the  Government  of  all  police  authority  over  an  army  of 
Churchmen  to  a  large  extent  hostile  to  Republicanism 
by  definition,  and  taking  their  cue  from  a  foreign  Power 
which  was  always  claiming  the  right  to  govern.  These 
Republican  statesmen  felt  that  to  break  all  ties  between 
the  State  and  the  Catholic  forces  would  leave  the  latter 
free  to  follow  their  natural  anti-Republican  allegiances, 
and  to  continue  in  the  open  certain  manoeuvres  they  had 
all  along  been  secretly  conducting  behind  the  scenes. 
Political  prudence  seemed  to  the  Opportunists,  from 
Ferry  to  Waldeck-Rousseau,  and  even  to  M.  Combes,  to 
require  the  maintenance  of  the  Concordat. 

In  proportion,   however,   as  the  work  of  laying  the 
foundations  of  the  Republic  approached  completion,  the 


90  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

utility  of  the  Concordat  for  the  State  became  less  and 
less  evident.  There  came  a  time  when  the  advantages  of 
the  pact  were  largely  on  the  side  of  the  Catholics.  It 
should  not  be  forgotten  that,  owing  to  the  changed  con- 
ditions of  modern  life,  most  of  the  guarantees  demanded 
by  Napoleon  were  rapidly  ceasing  to  have  any  real 
applicability  under  the  Republic.  They  were  counter- 
balanced by  the  new  laws  of  liberty  enacted  by  the  Re- 
public, laws  benefiting  the  clergy  and  the  Church  as  much 
as  the  other  citizens — the  liberty  to  teach,  liberty  of  the 
Press,  liberty  of  association — so  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
in  spite  of  the  Concordat,  the  Church  had  recovered  her 
territorial  power  and  her  political  power,  and  the  State 
was  actually  in  a  position  of  inferiority  with  regard  to  her. 
The  State  assured  the  Church  a  privilege  and  paid  its 
ministers  a  living  stipend  which  made  it  possible  for  them 
to  use  their  other  resources  for  political  ends.  Nothing 
is  more  characteristic  of  the  way  the  Concordat  was 
finally  ceasing  to  be  of  any  positive  political  utility  to  the 
State,  than  the  argument  used  in  a  letter  written  by 
Mgr.  Fuzet,  the  Archbishop  of  Rouen,  to  the  senatorial 
reporter  of  the  Separation  Bill,  with  the  purpose  of 
proving  that  Separation  would  be  a  blunder. 

"Do  not  Republican  politicians  understand,"  said  the  Archbishop, 
"  that  it  is  to  their  advantage  to  keep  the  religious  question  always 
under  discussion  ?  For  the  advanced  parties  clericalism  is  not  only 
the  enemy,  it  is  their  daily  bread.  It  is  the  big  drum  used  to  unite  the 
victorious  majorities  when  division  seems  impending.  Are  you  going 
to  burst  that  magic  drum  ?  .  .  .  Every  good  Republican  is  bound  to 
be  in  favour  of  the  Concordat.  To  be  in  favour  of  the  Concordat  is  not 
to  be  clerical,  it  is  to  be  far-sighted." 

To  the  disinterested  critic  this  naive  appeal  to  the 
sentiment  of  middle-class  Republican  camaraderie  is  of 
an  incomparable  humour.  Yet  it  was  not  wanting  in 
perspicacity.  The  important  thing  is  that  the  Concordat 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    91 

had  come  to  this:  it  had  the  value  of  a  tom-tom  !  And 
yet  .  .  .  reflecting  Republican  statesmen,  while  fully 
aware  of  the  fact,  still  hesitated ;  and  who  can  wonder  ? 
Even  M.  Combes  did  not  wish  to  hear  of  Separation.  He 
recalled,  perhaps,  the  wise  warning  of  Jules  Ferry  to  his 
electors  of  the  Vosges  in  1881: 

"  This  formula  of  separation,  just  because  it  is  a  simple  formula,  is  a 
deceptive  one.  .  .  .  The  first  fact  that  completely  enlightened  me 
was  .  .  .  the  religious  revolution  introduced  by  the  Vatican  into  the 
doctrines  and  the  general  affairs  of  the  Catholic  Church.  .  .  .  That  is 
for  me  a  decisive  reason  for  preserving  the  Concordat,  inasmuch  as  the 
more  ecclesiastical  authority  is  concentrated,  centralized,  the  more  it 
takes  on  the  semblance  of  a  veritable  Cesarism.  ...  The  more  the 
Government  of  the  Catholic  world  resembles  absolute  authority,  the 
more  the  national  churches  are  disciplined  in  a  common  obedience — and 
the  more  important  it  is  for  a  Government  like  our  own  to  have  with  it 
a  good  contract." 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that,  even  now,  Separation 
would  not  be  the  accomplished,  though  bastard,  fact  it  is 
but  for  the  diplomatic  inexperience  of  the  present  Pope, 
whose  blundering  policy  forced  upon  the  State — and, 
against  their  will,  upon  the  majority  of  the  French  clergy 
— the  events  leading  up  to  Separation. 

But  what  part  did  the  French  clergy  play  throughout 
the  entire  period  when  the  Republic  was  literally  fighting 
for  its  life — the  period  extending  from  the  Government  of 
National  Defence  down  almost  to  1905  ? 

In  the  first  place,  the  Syllabus  of  Pius  IX,  which  was 
known  to  define  the  attitude  of  the  reigning  Pope  up  to 
the  accession  of  Leo  XIII  in  1878,  had  more  than 
awakened  the  distrust  of  the  Republican  statesmen:  it 
was  a  pillar  of  cloud  by  day  and  of  fire  by  night  to  the 
members  of  the  Republican  Masonic  Lodges.  By  the 
blast  of  the  Syllabus,  as  from  an  archangel's  trumpet, 
society  was  informed,  urbi  et  orbi,  that  the  forces  of 


92  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Vaticanism  were  out  to  all  the  points  of  the  compass, 
feeling  for  their  prey,  namely,  for  every  manifestation  of 
the  "  modern  spirit  "  and  of  laic1  society.  The  Vatican 
thereby  declared  its  hostility,  not  merely  against  the 
scientific  method  of  thought,  but  against  the  right  of  the 
individual  to  choose  his  own  religion.  It  declared  the 
supremacy  of  the  Church  over  the  civil  authority,  the 
infallibility  of  the  Pope,  the  natural  right  of  the  Church 
to  acquire  and  possess  property,  and  to  ignore  the  civil 
tribunals,  and  the  right  of  ecclesiastics  to  claim  exemption 
from  military  service.  It  affirmed,  notably,  the  criminal 
character  of  all  legislation  placing  public  schools  under 
State  supervision,  making  them  neutral  as  regards  re- 
ligious instruction,  and  freeing  them  from  the  authority 
of  the  Church.  It  reproved  the  doctrine  of  the  separa- 
tion of  Church  and  State.  It  anathematized  the  "  error  " 
according  to  which  "  it  was  permissible  to  refuse  obedi- 
ence to  legitimate  princes,  and  even  to  revolt  against 
them,"  thus  lending  the  support  of  the  Church  to  pre- 
tenders like  the  Comte  de  Chambord.  It  condemned 
divorce  laws,  and,  in  fact,  the  whole  of  the  French  legisla- 

1  "  Laic  ?  The  word  is  French  rather  than  English;  and,  as  yet,  in 
communities  of  people  who  speak  English,  the  term  has  no  force, 
because  no  vogue.  On  the  continent  of  Europe,  however,  laic  has  for 
a  long  time  now  been  growing  hi  familiarity  as  a  name  for  all  the 
impulses  that  mark  the  temper  of  persons  resentful  of  authority;  it  is 
less  exact  to  say,  but  briefer  and  more  intelligible,  a  name  for  all  the 
impulses  of  the  '  people.'  Science  has  not  to  approve  or  condemn  the 

thing  thus  named.     Its  sole  business  is  to  draw  attention  to  the  fact 

A  fresh  spirit  is  growing  on  our  planet ...  a  spirit  which,  having  at  first 
its  origin  in  a  feeling  of  reaction  against  ecclesiastical  authority  alone, 
is  rapidly  broadening,  so  as  to  include  the  entire  series  of  feelings  of 
suspicion  of  all  authority  whatsoever,  of  dislike  of  whatsoever  institu- 
tions, and  compact  monopolizing  organisms;  and  it  is  this  feeling, 
binding  together  the  '  people '  in  every  country  east  and  west,  which 
deserves  a  name,  and  which,  in  want  of  a  better,  I  have  called  laic.  ..." 
Patriotism  and  Science,  by  the  Author,  p.  149,  Boston,  1893. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    93 

tion  on  marriage.  In  a  word,  while  this  famous  document 
(it  matters  little  whether  or  no  it  be  taken  as  ex  cathedra] 
constituted  a  challenge  to  many  of  the  ideals  of  modern 
civilizations,  and  ignored  the  seemingly  inveterate  ten- 
dency to  an  increasing  separation  of  the  spiritual  and 
temporal  powers,  the  State  and  the  country  which  Pius  IX 
appeared  to  be  singling  out  for  special  reprobation  was 
the  France  of  the  Revolution  and  of  the  "  rights  of  man  " : 
Republican  France,  whose  ideas  of  liberty  of  conscience 
he  condemned  as  iniquitous,  and  whose  efforts  for  the 
emancipation  of  the  State  from  religious  authority  he 
described  as  impious. 

Wherever  French  Republican  statesmen  looked,  they 
saw  the  standard  of  reactionary  conservatism,  which  the 
Vatican  had  raised,  intertwined  with  the  flags  of  the  forces 
enlisted  against  the  Republic.  On  the  morrow  of  the  con- 
spiracy of  May  16,  and  of  the  elections  of  1877,  the  hands 
of  the  clergy  were  everywhere  visible  in  the  coups  de 
theatre  of  those  episodes.  The  historian  Rambaud  points 
out  that  the  "  clerical  party  had  been  the  cement  that 
had  held  together  the  various  political  parties  "  during 
that  assault;  and  he  recalls  the  fact  that,  in  1877,  the 
counsels  given  by  the  Vatican  under  Pius  IX's  pontificate 
were  by  no  means  those  that  arrived  from  Rome  later 
on  under  the  pontificate  of  Leo  XIII.  Jules  Ferry  was 
not  exaggerating  when,  addressing  his  Vosgian  con- 
stituents in  1879,  he  said:  "Ten  years  of  such  laisser- 
aller  as  the  present,  of  such  blindness,  and  you  will  see 
all  this  fine  system  of  free  schools,  independent  of  state 
control,  .  .  .  crowned  by  a  final  liberty,  that  of  civil 
war."  Not  that  all  Catholics  were  reactionary  and  anti- 
republican;  but  all  anti-Republicans  and  Reactionaries 
were  Catholic.  The  Syllabus  of  Pius  IX  was  a  warning. 
It  suggested  the  necessity  of  a  programme  of  Republican, 


94  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

therefore  national,  defence.  In  the  minds  of  the  Re- 
publican leaders  it  justified  distrust  of  the  Church.  It 
speedily  inspired  an  energetic  response  to  her  declarations 
and  acts  of  war.  Gambetta's  le  clericalisme,  voild  V&n- 
nemi  was  the  plastic  form  assumed  by  this  pervasive  senti- 
ment of  fear.  The  Republicans  congratulated  themselves 
that,  after  all,  they  had  the  instrument  of  the  Concordat 
by  which  to  maintain  a  certain  discipline  in  at  least  one 
of  the  potential  armies  of  its  enemies. 

But,  after  all,  the  French  Catholics  could  not  be  held 
responsible  for  the  Syllabus,  as  long  as  they  kept  oheir 
oath  of  allegiance  to  the  State  and  obeyed  its  laws.  How 
did  they  undertake  to  dissipate  the  distrust  which  their 
dependency  upon  Rome  excited  ?  Above  all,  what  was 
the  positive  r6le  of  the  French  bishops  and  clergy,  and  of 
the  French  Catholics,  placed,  as  they  were,  in  a  position 
so  immensely  to  facilitate,  or  so  seriously  to  hamper,  the 
establishment  of  Republican  Government  in  France  ?  It 
may  be  summed  up  in  a  single  word:  persecution  of  the 
Republic.  And  when  they  were  refused  the  right  to 
persecute,  they  themselves  cried  out  that  they  were  being 
persecuted.  Those  who  accuse  the  "  eldest  daughter  of 
the  Church  "  of  occasionally  unfilial  sentiment  towards 
her  spiritual  parent  forget  that  that  parent  has  often 
acted  the  part  of  a  stepmother.  The  Church  seemed  often 
to  be  attacking  all  that  the  Republic  held  dear.  It 
appeared  to  be  a  vast  syndicate  opposed  to  every  ideal 
and  conquest  of  Republican  legislation.  It  is  impossible, 
within  the  limits  of  the  present  book,  to  give  any  but  an 
inadequate  account  of  the  dangerous  and  systematic  war 
waged  against  the  Republic  by  the  occult  Catholic  Party  in 
France ;  but  a  few  instances  will  suffice  to  account  for  the 
attitude  of  Republican  statesmen  and  Republican  citizens 
in  their  resistance  to  the  unpatriotic  work  of  the  clerical 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    95 

power.  The  cases  and  the  methods  here  cited  will  show 
how  inevitable  it  was  that  such  persecution  should  give 
birth,  in  certain  fanatical  portions  of  the  Republican 
party,  to  a  spirit  of  counter-persecution :  witness  the  out- 
rageous delation  scandals  of  the  War  Office  under  General 
Andre.  A  la  guerre  comme  a  la  guerre.  But  these  facts, 
by  contrast,  will  render  all  the  more  surprising  the  self- 
possession  of  the  French  Parliament  when  it  was  finally 
called  upon  to  solve  the  problem  of  Separation,  and  when, 
instead  of  passing  a  Bill  inspired  by  anti-clerical  animosity, 
it  prepared  and  enacted,  under  the  guidance  of  M.  Briand, 
and  in  a  spirit  of  judicial  calm,  a  measure  of  adequate 
liberty  for  the  Church,  consonant,  not  only  with  the 
French,  but  even  with  the  Anglo-Saxon,  ideal  of  justice, 
and  in  harmony  with  the  other  conquests  of  French 
idealism  during  the  nineteenth  century. 

The  supreme  "  error  "  of  France,  that  which,  in  the 
opinion  of  the  Vatican,  required  the  mobilization  of  all  its 
agents  to  combat  it,  was  the  effort  of  French  statesmen 
to  establish  a  national  school  system  free  from  clerical 
domination.  The  task  is  not  yet  accomplished,  but  the 
Republic  has  little  by  little  substituted  the  principle  of 
independent  and  methodical  research  for  that  of  authority 
and  tradition,  the  scientific  impulse  for  the  religious ;  and 
this  achievement  the  Catholics  still  find  it  difficult  to 
forgive.  The  freedom  of  thought  and  the  spirit  of 
tolerance  manifested  during  the  debate  on  the  Separation 
Bill  of  1905,  were  the  social  fruits  of  an  intellectual  educa- 
tion of  this  sort.  The  Republic  has  aimed  at  reaping  a 
harvest  of  those  civic  virtues  which  characterize  a  self- 
respecting  democracy.  A  State  School  was  regarded  as 
the  most  efficient  method  of  Republican  action.  The 
Church  protested.  It  described  as  persecution  the  limita- 
tion of  one  of  its  monopolies.  The  conscious  effort  of 


96  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Republican  and  Democratic  France  to  organize  society 
according  to  the  dominant  principles  of  our  laic  time, 
was  a  movement  which  was  bound  to  meet  with  resist- 
ance from  theocratic  vested  interests.  By  means  of  the 
primary  schools  founded  by  the  Republic,  which  were  the 
greatest  work  of  Ferry,  the  Republican  statesmen  wit- 
tingly sought  to  wrest  the  boys  and  girls  of  France  from 
exclusive  clerical  training,  and  to  educate  them  for  their 
duty  as  responsible  Republican  citizens.  This  steady, 
inevitable  and  characteristic  work  of  the  Republic  to 
assure  the  existence  of  a  neutral  laic  school  seemed,  to  the 
Church,  a  work  of  irreligion,  of  impiety.  And  when  the 
French  State  is  accused  of  persecution,  one  of  the  motives 
of  the  charge  may  be  confidently  ascribed  to  the  poignant 
regret  with  which  the  Catholics  have  seen  the  Republic 
rooting  itself  steadily  in  the  hearts  of  the  people  by  the 
device  of  a  national  school  system. 

Nothing  would  be  easier  than  to  cite  passages  from  the 
pastoral  letters  and  the  minutes  of  Church  Congresses,  or 
to  adduce  typical  instances  of  active  ecclesiastical  pres- 
sure, condemning  and  combating  the  school  laws  of  suc- 
cessive Republican  governments.  When  Mgr.  Freppel, 
Bishop  of  Angers,  was  not  addressing  circulars  to  his  flock 
characterizing  the  French  National  Fete  of  July  14  as  the 
"  anniversary  of  one  of  the  most  odious  massacres  of 
which  French  history  preserves  the  memory,"  he  was  con- 
testing inch  by  inch  in  the  Chamber  the  ground  on  which 
the  Republic  was  seeking  to  rear  the  national  free  school. 
Referring  to  the  law  on  primary  instruction,  another 
prelate,  this  time  an  Archbishop,  Mgr.  de  Cambrai,  de- 
scribed that  measure  as  having  been  "  more  dangerous 
for  France  than  the  war  of  1870  and  than  the  loss  of  her 
two  provinces,"  adding  that  if  the  system  lasted  ten  years 
France  would  be  "  rotten  to  the  core,  struck  from  the 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    97 

rank  of  civilized  nations."  M.  de  Cambrai's  prophecy 
has  not  yet  been  fulfilled.  He  went  on  to  "  preach  a  new 
crusade  against  the  barbarians,  who  had  made  a  pedestal 
of  the  word  liberty,  and  who  were  now  confiscating  every 
liberty.  Let  the  Catholics  hold  themselves  in  readiness, 
let  all  Conservatives  band  themselves  together  to  the  cry 
of  '  Dieu  le  veut.'  '  Still  another  prelate,  in  his  pastoral 
letter,  said:  "In  all  the  districts  where  the  pernicious 
scheme  of  removing  the  schools  from  the  influence  of  the 
Church  may  be  formed  and  carried  out,  it  will  be  rigor- 
ously incumbent  upon  the  Church  to  inform  the  faithful 
that  they  cannot  conscientiously  allow  their  children  to 
frequent  those  schools."  In  1885  the  International 
Catholic  Congress  of  Lyons  declared:  "It  would  be  in 
vain  to  seek  in  the  State  the  right,  the  competence,  or 
the  mission,  without  which  no  one  should  be  allowed  to 
teach.  Hence  the  practical  impossibility  of  admitting 
the  organization  of  a  corps  of  teachers  deriving  its  mission, 
its  competence  and  its  right,  from  the  State,  which  does 
not  possess  these  qualifications." 

These  are  typical  utterances  of  the  monotonous  diapa- 
son that  rang  in  the  ears  of  the  Republican  rulers  for  more 
than  a  quarter  of  a  century,  and  amid  which  they  calmly 
went  on  forging  that  admirable  instrument,  the  public 
school  system  of  France.  Nor  are  these  utterances  mere 
outbursts  of  petulance.  The  Church  suited  the  action  to 
the  word.  It  organized  all  over  France  political  associa- 
tions under  episcopal  authority,  the  consequence  of  a  mot 
d'ordre  of  the  sovereign  pontiff,  admirable  machines  of 
political  warfare  against  which  the  Republican  govern- 
ment had  to  fight,  with  rare  moments  of  truce,  from 
May  16  down  to  the  time  of  the  Dreyfus  case.  Evidently 
the  advantages  of  the  Concordat  for  the  State,  in  spite  of 
Ferry's  striking  argument,  were  no  longer  what  they  were 


98  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

when  that  instrument  was  signed  by  the  First  Consul. 
As  M.  Jules  Roche  said  in  a  speech  in  the  French  Chamber, 
the  French  prelates  and  priests  were  organized  in  a  "  per- 
manent and  multiple  conspiracy  against  the  Republic, 
against  modern  society,  and  against  universal  suffrage, 
in  order  to  alter  it,  corrupt  it,  and  oppress  it." 

In  this  rapid  survey  no  mention  has  been  made  of  the 
constant  breaches  of  the  Concordat  on  the  part  of  French 
Bishops,  their  reckless  readiness  to  create  compromising 
incidents,  the  irreconcilable  attitude  of  the  Freppels  and 
the  Gouthe-Soulards.1  The  persecution  of  the  State  by 
the  Church  during  the  period  previous  to  the  accession  of 
Pope  Leo  XIII  is  a  fact  of  history,  and  a  fact  of  which  the 
Church  is  proud.  When  Leo  XIII  took  office  in  1878, 
France  was  entering  upon  the  throes  of  the  war  on  behalf 
of  laic  instruction.  The  Pope,  cautious  diplomatist, 
seemed  to  be  studying  the  map  of  Europe.  France,  under 
the  leadership  of  Ferry,  appeared  to  be  forgetting  the 
dangers  at  home  in  the  effort  which  Bismarck  seconded, 
for  his  own  ends,  to  re-establish  in  Europe  the  prestige 
jeopardized  by  the  Treaty  of  Frankfort.  She  began  and 
continued  the  policy  of  Colonial  expansion,  which  has 
finally  resulted  in  her  recovering  her  place  among  the 
great  Powers.  But  the  old  parties  remain  inveterately 
hostile.  They  continued  their  systematic  opposition.  It 
is  noteworthy  that  Mgr.  Freppel,  no  doubt  acting  in 
obedience  to  the  Pope,  sought  to  deter  them  from  their 
anti-French  tactics  of  abdication  in  the  Colonies.  There 
was  a  lull  in  the  war  between  Church  and  State,  for  al- 
though Leo  XIII's  first  encyclical  had  declared  that  the 
policy  of  Pius  IX  was  to  be  continued,  the  new  Pope's 
manner  was  obviously  conciliatory,  and  the  counsels  that 
emanated  from  the  Vatican  were  no  longer  those  of 
1  See  the  present  writer's  Patriotism  and  Science,  pp.  24-38. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     99 

Pius  IX.  But  if  the  Vatican  seemed  quiet,  the  French 
Pretenders  were  still  on  the  alert.  The  famous  affair  of 
Boulangism  was  a  fresh  and  desperate  assault.  Let  one 
of  the  leading  Republican  Catholics  in  France  enlighten 
the  reader  as  to  the  way  the  Church  was  once  more  com- 
promised by  that  affair.  In  Les  Catholiques  Eepublicains ; 
Histoire  et  Souvenirs,  1890-1903,  the  Abbe  Pierre  Dabry 
says:  "  Just  as  the  Conservatives  did  not  mean  to  let  the 
country  have  peace,  so  likewise  they  were  equally  averse 
to  giving  peace  to  the  Church.  The  Catholics  had  com- 
mitted the  blunder  of  enlisting  in  the  monarchical  army, 
and  of  righting  at  the  side  of  the  Conservatives  in  every 
battle.  They  were  their  prisoners."  The  "  Conserva- 
tives "  had  but  one  object,  namely,  to  upset  the  Republic ; 
and  in  the  "  shameless  "  Boulangist  episode,  as  this  priest 
does  not  hesitate  to  call  it,  they  obliged  the  honest 
Catholics,  whom  they  duped  with  effrontery,  to  accept 
once  again  an  alliance  which  would  have  compromised 
them  irremediably  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  political 
sense  of  the  Pope. 

This  "  shameless  "  episode  of  Boulangism  opened  the 
eyes  of  Leo  XIII.  After  it  the  Republic  seemed  defini- 
tively established.  "  Ne  trmivez-vous  pas  qu'en  voild 
assez .?"  said  the  Pope  one  day  to  the  Archbishop  of 
Algiers,  with  reference  to  the  way  the  affairs  of  the  Church 
were  being  conducted  in  France.  His  meaning  was  clear. 
A  few  weeks  later  the  famous  toast  of  Cardinal  Lavigerie 
at  Algiers,  calling  upon  the  Catholics  to  defend  the  Re- 
public and  to  adhere  to  it  sans  arriere  pensee,  heralded  the 
encyclical  of  1892,  urging  on  all  French  Catholics  submis- 
sion to  the  Government;  an  instrument  shortly  followed 
up  by  a  brief  enforcing  obedience.  This  pronouncement 
opened  a  new  era.  It  seemed  a  harbinger  of  peace  and  of 
reconciliation.  It  was  welcomed  by  the  Republican 


100  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

rulers  in  a  spirit  of  genuine  deference  for  the  Pope  and  of 
confidence  in  his  sincerity.  Who  can  pierce  the  mystery 
of  a  man's  real  motives  ?  They  are  as  secret  as  the  move- 
ments of  the  Pleiades.  At  all  events  Leo  XIII's  act  was 
not  only  one  of  supreme  political  perspicacity,  but  also 
one  of  genuine  loyalty.  That,  moreover,  was  the  impres- 
sion of  the  Gambettists,  who  had  never  forgotten  the 
terms  in  which  their  chief  had  greeted  the  accession  of 
Cardinal  Pecci.  It  was  the  opinion  of  M.  de  Blowitz,  to 
whom  Leo  XIII,  speaking  of  the  Royalist  and  Conserva- 
tive parties,  said,  "  ISeglise  du  Christ  ne  s'attache  qu'a  un 
seul  cadavre,  a  celui  qui  est  lui-meme  attache  sur  la  croix  " — 
a  stupendous  utterance,  which  takes  its  place  among  the 
finest  that  history  preserves.  It  is  the  testimony,  more- 
over, of  a  score  of  eminent  Catholic  authorities,  among 
whom  the  latest  is  Mr.  Wilfred  Ward:  "  I  well  remember 
Cardinal  Rampolla's  unquenchable  hopefulness,  in  con- 
versation, that  if  only  the  conciliatory  policy  was  con- 
tinued long  enough  it  would  bear  fruit  at  last." 

The  Republican  statesmen  took  the  Pope  at  his  word. 
They  believed  in  his  sincerity  and  rejoiced  in  the  oppor- 
tunity of  sheathing  the  swords  they  had  had  to  use  for 
twenty  years  to  defend  themselves  against  the  Catholic 
assault.  No  eye-witness  can  ever  forget  the  strange  in- 
spiration, as  by  a  sort  of  Pentacostal  influence,  that  filled 
the  Chamber  of  Deputies  in  that  famous  sitting  of 
March  3, 1894,  when  M.  Spuller,  Minister  of  public  worship, 
the  confidant  and  inspirer  of  Gambetta,  delivered  the 
great  speech  which  marks  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  the 
Third  Republic.  Developing  the  religious  policy  of  the 
Government,  M.  Spuller  explained  the  new  spirit  of  toler- 
ance and  charity  which  the  Republican  State  henceforth 
intended  to  apply.  A  wave  of  genuine  enthusiasm  over- 
swept  the  country.  Leo  XIII,  who  had  put  himself  at 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS   101 

the  head  of  the  Democracy,  and  abandoned  the  "  corpse  " 
of  the  Conservative  party,  was  regarded  as  the  benefactor 
of  the  State.  The  Republican  Government,  eager  to  lay 
down  their  arms,  responded  loyally  to  the  papal  overtures. 
All  along  it  had  been  their  dream  to  open  wide  the  doors 
of  the  Republic.  Never  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  had  it 
been  possible,  for  outside  had  pressed  a  howling  mob,  led 
by  nondescript  pretenders,  the  immense  Catholic  army  at 
their  back,  ready  to  invade  and  sack  the  entire  house.  At 
last  a  Pope  of  keen  political  intelligence  had  made  it  pos- 
sible to  realize  the  ideal  of  an  open  and  tolerant  Republic. 
This  state  of  national  union  was  of  short  duration. 
There  was  gnashing  of  teeth  among  the  irreconcilable  sur- 
vivors of  the  old  regimes.  After  a  show  of  submission 
they  hardened  their  hearts  like  Pliaraoh.  In  this  way 
they  played  into  the  hands  of  the  Radical  Republicans, 
whose  anti-clericalism  they  revived.  Little  by  little  the 
old  battle  began  afresh,  but,  as  before,  the  first  blows  were 
dealt  by  the  clerico-conservative  coalition,  and  it  became 
obvious  that,  whatever  the  sincerity  of  the  Pope's  motives, 
the  consequences  of  his  policy  were  likely  to  be  the  oppo- 
site of  his  intentions.  The  order  to  the  Catholics  to  rally 
to  the  Republic  was  without  ulterior  motive.  Its  results 
went  to  justify  the  scepticism  of  the  Brissons  and  the 
Clemenceaus  who,  from  the  very  first,  regarded  it  as  a 
deep-laid  scheme  for  laying  hold  of  the  Republic,  in  a 
word  as  the  classic  policy  of  the  Trojan  horse.  French- 
men rapidly  lost  their  illusions  as  to  the  sincerity  of  the 
Conservative  Catholic  parties,  and  the  Republicans  found 
themselves  compelled  to  attack  the  Catholics  on  the  same 
old  battlefield.  The  history  is  familiar  to  all  observers  of 
France  during  the  period  from  1895  to  1905.  As  an  im- 
mediate result,  however,  of  the  encyclical  of  1892,  and  of 
the  "  new  spirit  "  in  the  Republican  Government,  France 


102  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

for  five  years  had  a  series  of  moderate  ministries.  Down 
to  1898  anti-clerical  legislation  was  banished  from  Parlia- 
ment, no  words  of  hostility  to  religious  liberty  were 
uttered  at  the  tribune.  But  what  was  the  consequence  ? 
Let  a  Catholic  writer  reply,  although  when  he  wrote  he 
was  hardly  aware  that  he  was  giving  a  response  to  that 
question : — 

"  Between  1894  and  1900  the  Catholics  were  free  to  extend  and  to 
develop  their  oeuvres.  Their  schools  and  their  colleges  were  filled. 
The  religious  orders,  victims  of  the  expulsion  of  1880,  completed  the 
reconstitution  of  their  establishments,  the  reopening  of  their  chapels, 
and  openly  resumed  direction  of  educational  institutions.  Religious 
activity,  in  a  word,  assumed  a  development  to  which  we  were  too  much 
in  a  hurry,  perhaps,  to  draw  attention." 

This  statement  of  the  advantages  of  the  golden  age  of 
the  Meline  and  other  administrations  is  taken  from  a  re- 
markable anonymous  study  due,  it  is  believed,  to  a  well- 
known  Jesuit:  La  Grande  Faute  des  Catholiques  (Perrin). 
The  author  might  have  added  that  the  bureaux  of  the  War 
Office  had  been  sedulously  packed  by  reactionary  youth 
educated  in  Church  schools,  and  that  the  invasion  of  laic 
society  by  the  Church  had  been  all  but  completed,  so  far, 
at  all  events,  as  the  Army  and  Navy  were  concerned.  The 
justification  of  this  statement  is  unnecessary  for  those  who 
recall  the  Dreyfus  Case.  The  Catholic  witness  forgets  to 
note,  furthermore,  among  the  consequences  of  what  he 
calls  the  souffle  liberal,  the  extension  of  the  "  good  press," 
and  the  marvellous  and  pernicious  politico-religious  part 
played  by  the  newspaper  La  Croix  during  the  Dreyfus 
Affair.  Boulangism  had  opened  the  eyes  of  the  Pope  to 
the  perils  of  the  Church's  policy  of  persecution  of  the  Re- 
public. The  Dreyfus  Affair  showed  the  entire  country 
that  even  the  sovereign  pontiff  had  not  succeeded  in  con- 
vincing all  French  Catholics  that  the  Republic  was  the 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     103 

only  possible  form  of  government  for  the  French  de- 
mocracy ;  and  that,  after  the  first  loyal  impulses  to  obey 
him,  they  had  allowed  themselves  to  be  drawn  with  the 
enemies  of  the  regime  (the  "  Nationalists  ")  into  a  fresh 
campaign  of  assault  against  the  State.  In  1901,  after  the 
Dreyfus  Case,  France  was  on  the  morrow  of  an  ardent 
battle,  in  which  the  very  existence  of  the  Republic  had 
been  at  stake.  The  campaign  of  the  "  Nationalists  "  and 
of  the  "  Patrie  Francaise  "  had  been  more  terrible  than 
that  of  Boulangism.  Republican  discipline  under  M. 
Waldeck-Rousseau  saved  the  State.  But  it  had  not  been 
the  fault  of  the  religious  orders — the  Jesuits  and  Assump- 
tionists — nor  of  the  religious  newspapers,  if  the  Republic 
did  not  go  to  the  wall.  Politically  there  was  no  time  to 
be  lost.  The  danger  had  been  conjured,  but  it  had  been 
immense.  No  government  could  defer  taking  legitimate 
precautions.  M.  Waldeck-Rousseau  took  them.  The 
form  that  those  precautions  assumed  was  inevitable.  It 
is  known  as  the  Associations  Law  of  July  1901,  and  it  re- 
sulted in  the  expulsion  from  France,  pell-mell  with  some 
of  the  worst  ecclesiastical  conspirators  that  have  ever 
troubled  the  public  peace  hi  any  country,  of  a  large 
number  of  innocent  persons  whom  reactionary  political 
wire-pullers  had  duped  into  complicity  with  the  anti- 
Republican  monks  and  bishops.  The  esprit  nouveau  had 
failed  owing  to  the  disloyalty  and  the  lack  of  political 
sense  of  certain  of  the  French  Catholic  leaders.  The 
Republican  State  once  more  unsheathed  its  sword  and 
assumed  its  former  attitude  of  defence.  Leo  XIII  died 
in  1903  broken-hearted. 

What  Gallicanism  and  Catholicism  thereby  lost,  Vati- 
canism— and,  it  should  be  said,  the  Triple  Alliance — was 
to  win.  Three  years  before  his  death  Leo  XIII  had 
written  a  firm  and  eloquent  letter  to  the  Archbishop  of 


104  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Bourges,  renewing  in  accents  of  bitter,  although  re- 
strained, indignation  his  protests  against  the  indiscipline 
of  certain  French  Catholics  in  their  incorrigible  resistance 
to  the  Republic,  and  their  refusal  to  accept  the  principle 
of  Democracy.  An  immense  Catholic  organization  known 
as  the  Action  Liberate  resolutely  set  its  face  against  the 
counsels  of  the  Vatican,  and  its  Catholic  Republican  atti- 
tude towards  the  Christian  democracy  once  more  com- 
promised Catholicism  in  the  eyes  of  the  Republicans. 
M.  Combes,  who  succeeded  M.  Waldeck-Rousseau,  largely 
actuated  by  the  manoeuvres  of  the  clergy  and  of  the  re- 
ligious orders  in  the  elections,  applied  the  Associations 
Law  in  a  spirit  which,  if  not  that  of  the  promoters  of  the 
law,  was  generally  recognized  by  Parliament  as  necessi- 
tated by  the  renewed  rebellious  activity  of  the  anti- 
Republican  prelates  in  resisting  the  law.  M.  Waldeck- 
Rousseau,  however,  protested  violently  against  the  dis- 
tortion, not  only  of  his  intentions  as  promoter  of  the  law, 
but  also  of  the  spirit  of  that  measure,  a  distortion  which 
resulted  in  the  closing  of  at  least  15,000  Catholic  schools 
and  the  illegal  persecution  of  many  thousands  of  in- 
offensive monks  and  nuns.  The  last  speech  he  delivered 
was  an  eloquent  appeal  in  favour  of  the  right  of  "  author- 
ized "  religious  orders  to  teach.  He  reaffirmed  the  obliga- 
tion of  Parliament  to  consider  on  their  merits  all  requests 
for  authorization.  He  was  not  heeded.  The  result  was 
that  the  Associations  Law,  which  was  meant  to  be  a 
measure  of  State  control,  became  one  of  virtually  whole- 
sale exclusion.  This  was  a  breach  of  faith  as  well  as  a 
grave  political  blunder.  It  resulted  in  "  persecution," 
recalling  the  most  characteristic  acts  of  hostility  of  the 
Church  towards  the  State.  But,  what  was  worse,  it  gave 
the  Vatican  legitimate  ground  for  protest,  and  created 
that  atmosphere  of  mistrust  which  later  on  was  to  warp 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    105 

the  Papal  judgment  in  connexion  with  the  acceptance  of 
the  Separation  Law.  The  Republic  was  bound  to  suffer 
for  this  misconstruction  of  the  Associations  Law,1  through 

1  An  excellent  sample  of  the  mentality  induced  by  the  misconstruc- 
tion of  the  Law  may  be  seen  in  a  letter  written  to  The  Times  of  Febru- 
ary 9, 1907,  by  Abbot  (now  Cardinal)  Gasquet,  President  of  the  English 
Benedictines.  This  letter  is  as  follows : 

"SlB, 

"  I  fear  from  his  letter  to-day  that  your  '  own  correspondent '  in 
Paris  must  have  been  quite  misled  in  more  ways  than  one.  He  seems 
to  imagine  that  he  has  got  to  the  bottom  of  the  difficulties  which  have 
hitherto  stood  in  the  way  of  a  peaceful  settlement  of  the  religious  ques- 
tion in  France.  Now  that  peace  is  perhaps  within  sight,  he  takes  the 
British  public  into  his  confidence  and  tells  them  that  it  is  all  the  doing 
of  the  wicked  '  monks.'  These  terrible  people,  to  revenge  themselves 
on  the  secular  clergy  of  France  for  their  spoliation  a  few  years  back, 
have  plotted  to  deceive  the  Pope,  and  have  coerced  him  into  acting  as 
he  has  done  of  late.  Now,  happily,  Pius  X  has  found  them  out, 
and  this  is  why  he  has  now  permitted  what  he  the  other  day 
condemned.  '  It  is  supposed,'  writes  your  correspondent,  '  that  their 
(the  monks')  cause  might  be  furthered  by  acute  religious  strife  in 
France.' 

"  Can  any  charge  be  more  odious  and  unjust  than  this  indefinite  and 
unsubstantiated  accusation  of  a  large  class  of  men,  vaguely  classed  as 
'  the  monks '?  I  believe,  nay,  I  am  absolutely  certain,  that  this 
serious  and  sweeping  charge  has  no  firmer  basis  than  the  irresponsible 
gossip  of  Parisian  cafes  and  such-like  places  of  information.  I  have 
some  right  to  speak,  because  I  am  one  of  these  monks  whose  property 
has  been  confiscated.  Owing  to  our  desire  to  keep  the  law,  we  en- 
deavoured, by  the  express  advice  of  M.  Waldeck-Rousseau  himself,  to 
regularize  our  position.  Had  we  taken  the  warning  of  friends  who  saw 
better  than  we  what  was  coming,  we  should  have  packed  up  some  years 
before  the  end  came,  and  have  saved  many  thousands  of  pounds  of 
English  money  belonging  to  English  subjects  whose  interests  we  had 
vainly  thought  our  English  Government  would  protect.  As  I  am  one 
of  the  sufferers,  and  as  I  still  smart  under  what  I  hold  to  have  been  the 
legalized  robbery  of  the  Combes  Ministry,  I  have  some  right  to  speak, 
and  I  reject  the  insinuations  made  by  your  correspondent  in  your  issue 
of  to-day  entirely  and  absolutely.  Even  to  deny  that  the  Pope  has 
been  misled  by  the  '  monks '  I  look  upon  as  an  impertinence  to  him. 
But  I  assert,  without  any  hesitation,  that  not  one  of  those  thousands  of 
despoiled  religious  would  not  be  willing  to  suffer  ten  times  as  much  as 


106  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

the  effect  which  the  inevitable  manoeuvres  of  resentful 
monks  produced  upon  the  new  Pope.  It  is  noteworthy, 
however,  that  Leo  XIII  did  not  retaliate,  and  it  is  certain 
that  the  so-called  "  expulsion  "  of  the  monks  was  an  event 
that  had  no  relation  whatever  with  the  subsequent 
measure  of  Separation,  which  was  largely  due  to  the  diffi- 
culties raised  by  Pius  X  in  connexion  with  the  Concordat 
and  M.  Loubet's  visit  to  Rome. 

With  the  accession  of  the  new  Pope  the  partisans  of  the 
old  regime  recovered  their  liberty  and  their  audacity. 
Pius  X,  the  dupe  of  the  insinuations  of  exiled  monks,  and 
the  victim  of  anti-French  influences  in  the  Triple  Alliance, 
and  of  his  own  doctrinaire  piety,  abandoned  the  prudent 
temporizations  of  his  predecessor,  and  indulged  in  act 
after  act  (such  as  sending  his  benediction  to  the  League  of 
French  Women,  a  dangerous  engine  of  war  against  the 
Republic)  which  renewed  the  old  and  dangerous  policy  of 
the  Pope  of  the  Syllabus.  When  M.  Loubet  visited  the 
King  of  Italy  Pius  X  addressed  to  the  European  Powers  a 

he  has  done,  rather  than  that  one  parish  church  should  be  closed  for 
public  worship. 

"  Why  does  not  your  correspondent  tell  his  English  readers  what  is 
the  fact  ?  He  must  know  that  if  there  is  peace — as  we  all  so  much 
hope — it  is  because  now  there  is  a  proposal  in  regard  to  the  churches 
which  the  Catholic  Church  can  accept,  since  it  practically  acknowledges 
the  Bishops,  and  through  them  the  Pope,  as  the  divinely  appointed 
heads  of  the  Church.  No  doubt  there  has  been,  is,  and  will  be,  much 
suffering  among  the  despoiled  French  clergy.  But  what  the  world  at 
large  cannot  fail  to  see  is  that  marvellous  spectacle,  in  a  sordid  age,  of 
the  entire  episcopate  and  clergy  of  the  French  Church  surrendering 
everything  they  possessed  for  the  sake  of  principle. 

"  I  am,  sir,  your  obedient  servant, 
"FRANCIS  A.  GASQTJET, 

"  Abbot,  President  of  the  English 

Benedictines. 
"  The  Athenaeum  Club, 
"  February  7." 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     107 

protest  against  that  visit,  couched  in  terms  offensive  to 
France.  The  insult  to  France  was  aggravated  by  the 
fact  that  certain  phrases  relating  to  an  eventual  recall  of 
the  papal  nuncio  did  not  figure  in  the  copy  sent  to  the 
French  Government.  For  the  Vatican  the  visit  of  the 
President  of  the  Republic  to  the  King  of  Italy  was 
that  of  a  Catholic  sovereign  to  the  heir  of  the  State  that 
had  despoiled  the  head  of  the  Church  of  his  temporal 
authority.  That  temporal  power  is  regarded  by  the 
Vatican  as  the  keystone  of  law  and  justice  throughout  the 
planet.  By  the  destruction  of  that  keystone  in  1870  all 
the  stones  of  the  arch,  one  after  another,  necessarily  fell.1 
From  the  point  of  view  of  the  Vatican  the  visit  of  M.  Lou- 
bet  was  an  affront.  The  policy  of  the  Vatican  has  been 
to  pit  France  against  Italy,  compromising  the  "  Eldest 
Daughter  of  the  Church,"  by  the  affirmation  of  a  persis- 
tent and  naive  confidence  in  her  intention  to  intervene 
sooner  or  later  for  the  restoration  of  the  temporal  power. 
Were  the  Vatican  to  abandon  the  dream  of  recovering  its 
territorial  sovereignty  it  would  be  more  than  the  loss  of  a 
hope,  it  would  be  positive  abdication.  As  the  French 
Deputy,  the  late  Abbe  Gayraud,  has  said :  "  It  was  of  pro- 
found political  wisdom  and  of  far-reaching  social  signifi- 
cance that  the  Pope  should  appear  before  the  whole  world, 

1  The  identical  words  of  a  curious  and  characteristic  expression  of 
clerical  politics,  Cte  de  la  Barre  de  Nanteuil's :  "  La  Papaute  et  la 
Future  Guerre  Europeenne  "  (Paris,  1896).  The  author  calls  upon 
Catholics  to  "  entrer  en  lutte  avec  le  royaume  d'ltalie  en  creant  un  courant 
dj opinion  publique  aufaveur  de  la  restauration  de  Vautorite  temporelle  du 
Saint  Siege."  Yet  it  was  just  the  inability  of  Republican  France  to 
convince  Italy  that  she  cherished  against  her  no  hostile  designs,  and 
was  in  reality  a  powerful  Power,  that  largely  contributed  to  fling  Italy 
into  the  arms  of  Germany.  Cf.  VHistoire  de  rfiglise  sous  la  Troisieme 
Republique,  by  M.  Lecanuet  (Paris,  Poussielgue,  1907).  This  work  by 
a  Catholic  historian  is  the  detailed  justification,  and  the  admission,  of 
my  remark  that  the  "  policy  of  the  Vatican  has  been  to  pit  France 
against  Italy,"  etc. 


108  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

not  as  the  citizen  of  any  nation,  nor  as  the  subject  of  any 
State,  but  amid  the  complete  radiance  of  his  apostolic 
independence."1 

The  French  Government  held  that  it  was  not  its  busi- 
ness to  contribute  to  the  consolidation  of  the  papal 
"  royalty."  Its  retort  to  the  protest  of  the  Vatican  was 
immediate  and  logical.  It  recalled  its  ambassador  lest 
his  further  presence  at  the  Vatican  be  interpreted  by  the 
Holy  See  hi  a  sense  favourable  to  its  pretensions  to  the 
temporal  power,  and  also  as  a  protest  against  the  Vati- 
can's claim  to  meddle  in  French  foreign  affairs.  Four 
hundred  and  twenty-seven  deputies  against  ninety-five 
approved  this  act  of  the  Government.  Until  then  M. 
Combes  had  been  opposed  to  the  separation  of  Church 
and  State.  The  Pope,  by  his  ill-advised  but  obviously 
responsible  policy,  and  by  his  anti-concordatory  acts, 
rendered  that  separation  logical.  The  cup  of  Republican 
indignation  ran  over  when,  contrary  to  the  terms  of  the 
Concordat,  the  Pope  refused  canonical  investiture  to 
priests  whom  the  Government  promoted  to  the  episcopate. 
Later  on,  without  co-operation  with  the  State,  the  Vatican 
deprived  two  French  Bishops  of  their  rights ;  and  this  also 
was  a  breach  of  the  Concordat.  Wantonly,  one  would 
say — and  later  events,  in  fact,  showed  that  it  was  the 
application  of  a  deep-laid  plot  of  hostility  to  France — the 
Vatican  was  seeking  a  quarrel  with  the  French  State. 
There  had  not  yet,  however,  been  complete  rupture  be- 
tween the  two,  since,  after  all,  it  depended  on  the  French 
Parliament  to  decide  whether  the  Concordat  should  be 
abrogated.  But  finally,  when  one  of  the  Bishops  ap- 
pointed by  the  State  had  been  suspended  from  his  func- 
tions by  the  Pope,  this  new  affront  was  so  excessive  that 

i  "  La  Loi  de  Separation  et  le  Pape  Pie  X."  (Blond  et  Cie.,  1906, 
p.  19.) 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     109 

M.  Combes  no  longer  hesitated.  The  honour  of  France 
was  at  stake.  He  gave  the  Pope  twenty- four  hours  to 
withdraw  the  letters  written  to  the  Bishops,  under  penalty 
of  the  immediate  rupture  of  diplomatic  relations.  Not 
having  obtained  satisfaction,  he  recalled  from  Rome  what 
remained  of  the  Embassy. 

The  door  was  wide  open  for  the  great  reform  of  a  free 
Church  in  a  free  State.  But  meanwhile  French  foreign 
policy  was  bound  to  suffer  by  the  rupture  of  relations 
between  the  Quai  d'Orsay  and  the  Vatican.  In  Syria,  in 
the  islands  of  the  Pacific,  and  finally  in  Morocco,  France 
learned  the  inconvenience  of  not  possessing  normal  facili- 
ties for  diplomatic  conversation  with  a  Power  which,  after 
the  Powers  of  Money  and  Democracy,  is  still  the  greatest 
in  the  world.  Whenever  a  French  Government  begins 
negotiations  with  the  Pope  for  the  re-establishment  of  an 
Embassy  at  the  Vatican  the  measure  will  not  only  con- 
solidate the  authority  of  France  and  the  effective  in- 
fluence of  the  Triple  Entente,  but  will  meet  with  the 
approval  of  the  immense  majority  of  French  citizens. 
To  use  the  words  of  M.  Poincare,  the  French  Prime 
Minister,  on  his  return  from  Russia  (August  1912),  it  will 
"  preserve  and  enhance  cette  conscience  collective  et  cette 
unite  de  sentiment  national  qui  font  la  grandeur,  la  gloire 
et  rimmortalite  des  peuples."1 

Ill 

The  adjustment  of  the  relations  between  the  Churches 
and  the  State  has  been  only  one  of  the  problems  absorbing 
the  attention  of  political  parties  in  France.  The  politico- 
religious  character  of  the  Dreyfus  Case  was  unmistakable. 
The  Dreyfus  Case  was  in  reality  a  revival  of  the  Wars  of 

1  Of.  p.  330,  note  1. 


110  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

the  League  during  the  reign  of  Henri  IV.  What  Dr. 
Gustave  Lebon  calls  the  "  psychology  of  revolutions  " 
will  class  these  two  episodes  as  events  of  the  same  general 
order.  The  Dreyfus  Case  was  a  ten  years'  period  of  civil 
war  which  seemed  to  be  interrupting  the  steady  advance 
of  French  society,  but  which,  when  all  was  over,  was  seen 
to  have  precipitated  that  advance,  and  to  have  trans- 
formed the  nation  and  the  State. 

The  political  and  social  consequences  of  the  Dreyfus 
Case  were  immense  and  are  not  yet  spent.1  In  that 
great  religious  war  two  conflicting  French  ideals  fought 
almost  to  the  death ;  the  ideal  of  the  raison  d'etat  and  the 
ideal  of  Us  droits  de  Vhomme ;  the  ideal  of  a  sovereign 
centralized  State,  repressive  of  individual  privilege,  and 
the  ideal  of  individual  right  chafing  against  laws  and  con- 
ventions that  subordinate  the  individual  to  the  interests 
of  the  community ;  the  ideal  of  a  justice  based  on  national 

1  The  virus  secreted  by  the  Dreyfus  Affair  still  remains  singularly 
potent  whenever  it  touches  certain  vulnerable  organs  of  the  body- 
politic.  On  January  11, 1913,  M.  Millerand,  the  ablest  minister  of  War 
that  France  has  had  for  many  years,  was  led,  under  pressure  of  the 
Extreme  Radical  deputies,  to  resign,  because  he  had  reintegrated  in  the 
territorial  force,  Lt.-Col.  du  Paty  de  Clam,  one  of  the  staff-officers  who 
had  played  a  predominant  part  in  the  incrimination  of  Captain  Dreyfus 
for  high  treason.  The  Minister's  resignation  took  place  at  the  critical 
moment  when  Rumanian  blackmail  of  the  Balkan  League,  synchroniz- 
ing with  a  deadlock  in  London,  between  the  Balkan  and  Turkish  peace- 
plenipotentiaries,  appeared  to  be  placing  Europe  within  grave  danger  of 
a  general  war.  It  would  not  be  easy  to  find  in  the  annals  of  French 
domestic  policy  a  finer  instance  of  the  tyranny  and  caprice  of  the  Legis- 
lative Authority,  nor  a  more  sinister  proof  of  the  crying  need  in  France 
of  a  reinforcement  of  the  principle  of  the  Separation  of  Powers.  The 
occasion  was  one  to  recall  the  remark  of  Dr.  Woodrow  Wilson  (The  State, 
p.  232) :  "  Almost  every  public  man  of  experience  and  ability  in  France 
has  now  been  in  one  way  or  another  discredited  by  the  action  of  the 
Chamber  of  Deputies;  and  France  is  staggering  under  that  most  burden- 
some, that  most  intolerable,  of  all  forms  of  government,  government  by 
mass-meeting — by  an  inorganic  popular  assembly." 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     111 

expediency,  and  of  a  justice  rooted  in  the  conviction 
peculiar  to  every  human  consciousness,  that  the  right  to 
life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness  is  no  illusion. 

The  significance  of  this  ten  years'  civil  war  in  France 
rarely  appealed  to  the  foreigner.  When,  in  1898,  the 
late  M.  Brunetiere  harped,  in  articles  in  the  Revue  des 
deux  Mondes,  and  in  a  series  of  vigorous  pamphlets,  on  the 
single  string  that  "  individualism  "  was  the  great  danger 
for  his  countrymen ;  when  the  State  Attorney,  in  the  trial 
of  Emile  Zola,  at  Versailles,  accused  that  novelist  of 
"  not  understanding  the  genius  of  France,"  public  opinion 
throughout  the  Anglo-Saxon  world  failed  completely  to 
seize  the  drift  of  these  sayings.  No  Englishman,  no  Ger- 
man, no  American,  seemed  to  be  aware,  or  they  had  all 
forgotten,  that  the  age-long  endeavour  of  France  had 
been,  wittingly  or  unwittingly,  the  construction  of  a 
strongly  centralized  power,  a  machine  in  which  all  the 
separate  parts,  all  the  members  of  the  body-politic,  should 
be  mute  accessories,  simple  functionaries — anonymous 
fulfillers  of  a  function — without  individual  rights  or  privi- 
leges. The  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes  had  ejected 
certain  elements  that  clogged  the  machine  and  were  a 
cause  of  friction.  Their  absence  rendered  the  problem 
of  the  construction  of  a  really  national  unity  much  easier 
to  solve.  No  such  State  as  the  French  was  ever  before 
formed  on  so  vast  a  scale.  The  maintenance  of  such  a 
State  implies  the  sacrifice  of  the  individual  citizen  to  the 
glory  and  beauty  of  the  whole.  It  creates  an  excellent 
soil  for  the  cultivation  of  such  weeds  as  Antisemitism, 
and  it  demands  the  enactment  of  excessive  repressive 
legislation,  like  that  of  1894  against  the  anarchists, 
measures  that  were  rushed  through  the  Chamber  of 
Deputies  without  debate,  and  that  were  of  easy  applica- 
tion to  "  crimes  of  opinion,"  to  differences  of  view  on 


112  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

social  problems  and  social  duties.  But,  at  the  same  time, 
in  such  a  State,  the  faults  of  the  individuals  composing 
it  will  almost  all  belong  to  the  category  of  amiable  defects, 
in  contradistinction  to  the  odious  merits  produced  among 
a  people  that  have  evolved  according  to  an  opposite  ideal 
of  justice  and  national  duty.  The  faults  will  be  the 
defects  of  children  scheming  for  place  and  advancement, 
for  ribbons  and  for  honours,  in  a  word  for  recognition  by 
the  community,  for  some  form  of  national  sanction  of  their 
conduct.  In  such  a  State  the  word  honour  will  have  a 
double  sense. 

The  qualities,  therefore,  which  in  France  are  to  sliine  in 
the  individual,  are  not  those  that  make  the  glory  of  the 
citizen  in  the  lands  where  Protestantism  has  triumphed, 
and  where  the  notions  of  social  and  civic  justice  have  not 
grown  out  of  a  tendency  to  centralization :  self -assertive- 
ness,  self-reliance,  moral  and  civic  courage — but,  on  the 
contrary,  the  qualities  that  are  most  effective  in  an  organic 
community:  all  the  social  qualities,  in  a  word,  ranging 
from  an  ideal  of  discipline  like  that  of  the  Japanese 
Bu^hido,  with  its  reflection  in  the  Japanese  smile,  to  the 
most  agreeable  forms  of  French  urbanity,  and  to  the 
French  gift  for  festal  demonstrations.  Society  in  such  a 
State  becomes  organized  politeness.  Literature  and  art 
are  pre-eminently  expected  to  show  symptoms  of  gout ; 
that  is  to  say,  of  codified  taste.  Thought  must,  at  all 
costs,  be  made  intelligible;  and  if  possible  its  expression 
must  be  rendered  average.  Renan's  confession,  in  the 
preface  of  his  L'Avenir  de  la  Science,  as  to  his  intentional 
effort  to  alter  his  literary  style  in  order  to  please  his 
compatriots,  is  only  the  echo  of  the  principles  of  a  Vauge- 
las.  In  such  a  State  we  shall  find  the  clear,  correct, 
straightforward  style  of  prose  recognized  as  useful.  And 
as  a  consequence  of  the  genius  of  France,  patriotism  in 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     113 

France  is  arguably  another  thing  than  in  England,  or 
Holland,  or  the  United  States,  where  the  genius  of  the 
inhabitants  makes  for  the  aggrandizement  of  the  indivi- 
dual rather  than  for  the  development  of  man  in  society, 
or  for  the  completer  perfecting  of  the  social  organism. 
Frenchmen  have  always  preferred  the  latter  form  of 
civilization,  and  in  spite  of  Democracy  they  prefer  it  still. 
Napoleon  came  and,  completing  the  work  of  Richelieu 
and  Louis  XIV,  constructed  the  scaffolding — patented 
over  and  over  again  by  successive  governments,  even  by 
the  Third  Republic — with  which  the  French  are  still 
building  their  great  sample  nation.  It  ought  not  to  have 
caused  any  surprise,  therefore,  in  1898,  during  the  Dreyfus 
case — at  that  critical  moment  when  the  idea  of  abstract 
justice  seemed  likely  to  throw  the  whole  machine  out  of 
gear — that  many  a  Frenchman,  keenly  alive  to,  or  at 
least  sub-consciously  divining,  what  is  unquestionably 
the  genius  of  French  history,  should  have  rallied  to  the 
side  of  the  Anti-Dreyfusists  with  Brunetiere  and  M.  Jules 
Lemaitre,  with  M.  Bourget,  M.  Barres  and  M.  Charles 
Maurras  and  with  ninety-nine  per  cent,  of  the  French 
army.  Moreover,  all  that  has  just  been  said,  not  only 
explains  the  feeling  of  persistent  hostility  to  aggressive 
minorities,  to  the  Protestants,  for  instance,  and  the  Free- 
Masons,  but  even  partially  justifies  that  feeling.  Patriotic 
duty  in  France,  from  1895  to  1905  was  conceivably  quite 
another  thing  than  what  it  is  to-day,  or  than  it  ever  has 
been,  for  instance,  in  England.  And  this  touches  the 
essential  point.  If  French  history  is  so  absorbingly 
interesting,  in  a  philosophic  sense,  it  is  because  of  the  age- 
long struggle  in  France  between  two  opposite  theories  of 
human  development,  the  Protestant  and  the  Catholic, 
between  Individualism  and  Solidarity,  between  Free 
Thought  and  Authority.  The  ideal  of  the  Michelets  and 


114  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

the  Quinets  was  that  of  the  founders  of  New  England: 
"  A  Church  without  a  Bishop  and  a  State  without  a  King." 
The  Dreyfus  Affair  was  the  revenge  of  the  revocation  of 
the  Edict  of  Nantes.  But  even  this  patent  fact  escaped 
the  perspicacity  of  foreign  observers,  who  regarded  the 
glorious  "  Affair "  as  a  monstrous  scandal  rendering 
France  a  by- word  among  the  nations.  They  did  not 
know  that  in  France  there  are  two  forms  of  patriotism, 
that  of  the  men  who  either  protest  as  idealists,  or  who 
sulk  as  envious  outsiders ;  and  that  of  the  men  who  either 
acquiesce  as  conservatives,  or  sell  their  birthright  for  a 
place  at  the  budgetary  board.  French  history  is  the 
record  of  the  duel  between  these  two  patriotisms.  When- 
ever Frenchmen  have  forgotten  that  they  belong  to  a 
national  community  that  forms  part  of  Europe,  the  clash 
between  their  two  patriotisms  has  resulted  in  civil  war, 
and  the  enemies  of  France  have  rubbed  their  hands  in  glee. 
Whenever  France  has  been  hard-pressed  by  the  foreigner, 
these  two  patriotisms  have  sunk  their  differences,  and 
France,  recovering  her  national  self-consciousness,  has 
presented  to  the  world  an  impregnable  battle-front. 


IV 

The  foregoing  pages  show  the  obvious  absurdity  of  using 
for  the  interpretation  of  French  events  the  same  general 
ideals  which  serve  to  explain  events  occurring  among 
peoples  who  live  according  to  another  social  system,  and 
are  therefore  the  product  of  quite  another  historic  evolu- 
tion. The  struggle  in  France  between  the  Catholic 
Church  and  the  Republican  State,  as  well  as  the  Dreyfus 
Affair,  are  excellent  illustrations  of  this  truth.  The 
record  of  the  purely  political  and  constitutional  develop- 
ment of  France,  as  affected  by  its  social  and  economic 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     115 

evolution,  is  no  less  conclusive  proof  that  the  only  abso- 
lute fact  in  the  world  is  that  all  things  are  relative. 

During  an  entire  week  in  March  1909  some  five  or  six 
thousand  Parisian  postmen  and  telegraph  clerks,  assisted 
by  their  comrades  in  the  provinces,  remained  absent  from 
their  posts  and  imposed  their  will  on  nearly  forty  millions  of 
their  fellow-citizens.  Startled  spectators  in  other  countries 
immediately  concluded  that  France  was  in  revolution. 
The  event  in  question  was  called  a  "  strike,"  but  it  was 
a  strike  of  a  new  kind,  in  reality  an  interesting  symptom 
of  the  evolution  of  French  society  under  the  influence  of 
Democratic  principles.  It  was  the  revolt  of  a  consider- 
able group  of  one  privileged  class  of  the  French  nation 
against  the  national  Parliament;  and  the  executive 
authority  in  the  nation  was,  for  a  tune,  so  paralysed  that 
none  of  the  numerous  acts  of  insubordination  connected 
with  the  event  was  punished,  while,  in  order  to  restore  the 
normal  life  of  the  community,  the  Prime  Minister  was 
obliged  to  parley  directly  with  the  representatives  of  the 
group  of  State  officials,  as  Roman  Emperors  negotiated 
with  the  pretorians. 

Small  wonder  if  an  incident  of  so  peculiar  a  character 
imposed  attention.  The  enemies  of  the  Republic  were 
sure  to  seize  upon  it  as  reinforcing  their  theory  of  the 
essential  anarchy  inherent  in  a  Republican  State.  They 
interpreted  the  strike  as  the  beginning  of  the  end  of 
the  present  political  system  in  France.  The  authority 
of  the  French  Parliament,  they  said,  had  become  inferior 
even  to  that  of  the  Russian  Duma.  "  Pronunciamiento 
Syndical,"  "  Fin  de  Regime,"  "  La  Trahison  des  Em- 
ployes de  1'Etat  " — such  were  some  of  the  formulas  in 
which  public  opinion,  in  France  and  abroad,  crystallized 
its  astonishment  and  its  apprehensions.  A  French  his- 
torian and  professor,  M.  Aulard,  described  the  strike  as 


116  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

"  nothing  more  or  less  than  the  most  considerable  event 
which  has  occurred  since  the  French  Revolution."  No 
apology  is  required  for  the  attempt  to  analyse  curiously, 
and  somewhat  more  scientifically  than  would  hitherto 
appear  to  have  been  done,  the  nature  of  an  event  which 
aroused  such  exceptional  comment.  One  preliminary 
observation,  moreover,  must  be  made  in  definition  of  the 
event  taken  in  and  by  itself,  without  reference  to  its 
origin  or  consequences.  That  observation  is  this:  the 
biologic  law  of  specialization  of  function  seems  to  have 
its  analogy  in  the  departments  of  political  and  social 
science,  the  number  of  vital  points  in  any  given  society 
becoming  more  and  more  numerous  as  the  community 
becomes  more  organic,  more  highly  developed — what  we 
call  more  "  civilized."  In  most  modern  States  a  minority 
can  overrule  the  will  of  the  vast  majority,  and  easily 
effect  the  provisional  disruption  of  the  social  organism. 
In  March  1909,  in  France  the  syndical  energy  of  some 
eight  thousand  individuals,  grouped  for  common  action, 
annihilated  for  a  considerable  period  the  united  force  of 
the  national  sovereignty.  The  interests  of  a  single  syndi- 
cate outweighed  those  of  the  syndicate  of  consumers,  of  the 
whole  mass  of  tax-payers — the  syndicate  of  the  nation. 

Two  years  later,  in  the  summer  of  1911,  another  series  of 
incidents  hi  another  part  of  France,  gave  rise  to  similar 
apprehensions.  Again  startled  spectators,  both  at  home 
and  in  other  countries,  exclaimed  that  France  was  in 
revolution.  Fortunately  the  student  of  political  science 
has  an  advantage  which  not  all  scientists  enjoy.  His 
experiments  are  prepared  for  him  by  other  people;  he 
has  only  to  sit  quietly,  like  the  astronomer,  and  watch 
the  changing  phenomena.  In  France,  owing  to  the 
Frenchman's  repugnance  for  blurred  edges,  his  logical, 
systematizing  intelligence,  political  facts  uniformly  assume 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     117 

an  exceptional  neatness  of  outline  which  tends  to  enhance 
their  apparent  importance.  They  loom  larger  than  life. 
Events  there  isolate  themselves  automatically,  as  if  for 
the  more  convenient  investigation  of  the  observer. 

Thus  in  1911  in  France  certain  of  the  Eastern  provinces 
became  the  scene  of  what  can  only  be  described  as  a 
revival  of  the  Dionysiac  orgies.  It  was  an  impressive 
spectacle.  As  the  bands  of  Bacchic  and  Maenad  revellers 
reeled,  burning  and  pillaging,  through  the  vineyards  of 
Champagne,  the  torch-lit  terror  of  the  Thracian  nights 
seemed  no  longer  a  poet's  dream.  But  the  scene  was 
not  merely  an  interesting  occasion  for  aesthetic  pleasure, 
not  merely  even  a  happy  opportunity  for  the  kine- 
matographer.  It  was  also  a  fresh  symptom,  after  so 
many  others,  of  a  certain  state  of  the  French  body- 
politic,  and  it  was  no  doubt  what  is  called  a  prodrome 
of  a  possible  change  in  the  French  political  and  social 
organism.  The  terrifying  events  in  Champagne  occurred 
under  the  eye  of  a  Government  apparently  powerless  to 
arrest  them,  and  of  a  Parliament  incompetent  to  suggest 
a  solution.  The  Prime  Minister  of  France  sat  like  Bel- 
shazzar  at  the  feast,  gazing  with  dismay  at  the  awful 
lettering  on  the  midnight  sky,  while  the  Deputies  wrung 
their  hands  like  a  Greek  chorus.  The  lettering  on  the 
wall  was  Greek  to  the  Prime  Minister.  What  may  have 
been  the  reflections  of  the  President  of  the  Republic,  who 
had  chosen  the  stalwart  Radical  Senator,  Monsieur  Mom's, 
to  govern  France,  is  not  known :  the  Head  of  the  State  in 
France  is,  by  the  real,  if  not  by  the  legal,  constitution,1  a 
mute  idol  in  a  pagoda,  without  responsibility  or  initiative. 
The  reflections  of  the  public  were  not  so  inarticulate. 

These  two  startling  manifestations  of  an  unrest  which 
the  superficial  foreign  observer  may  be  excused  for  having 
1  See  note,  p.  40  and  pp.  46-47. 


118 

regarded  as  revolutionary,  in  the  legendary  French  sense 
of  the  word,  may  be  studied  from  various  points  of  view ; 
but  it  would  be  a  mistake  not  to  class  them  together  as 
typical  instances  illustrating  what  may,  without  exag- 
geration, be  called  the  crisis  of  the  State  in  France.  An 
effort  has  been  made,  in  the  earlier  pages  of  this  book,1  to 
compare  certain  aspects  of  the  French  and  American  Con- 
stitutions. It  is  useful  to  continue  the  investigation  thus 
begun  by  a  somewhat  more  detailed  scrutiny  of  the 
political  and  administrative  organization  of  France.  The 
situation  in  that  country  is  not  entirely  without  its  sug- 
gestion for  other  countries ;  yet,  at  this  juncture,  it  is  more 
important  than  ever  to  insist  on  the  absurdity  of  hoping 
to  determine  the  effects  of  socio-political  phenomena  in  a 
given  society  by  comparing  those  effects  with  the  conse- 
quences of  apparently  similar  phenomena  in  communities 
differently  organized,  or  hardly  organized  at  all. 

Michelet  remarked,  for  instance,  that  the  whole  of 
English  history  could  be  summed  up  in  the  single  sen- 
tence: "England  is  an  island."  When,  in  her  char- 
acteristically brutal  fashion  Germany  sought,  by  the 
despatch  of  a  gunboat  to  the  ideally  strategic  point  of 
Agadir,  on  one  of  the  world-routes  of  the  Atlantic,  to 
separate  England  and  France,  and  to  imperil  the  efficacy 
of  their  entente,  while  tearing  up  two  diplomatic  con- 
ventions, the  Algeciras  agreement  and  her  own  agreement 
with  France  concerning  Morocco,  the  immediate  conse- 
quences of  her  action  merely  illustrated  once  again  the 
profound  truth  of  Michelet's  axiom. 

But  if  the  formula  of  Michelet,  intelligently  interpreted, 

is  the  sum  and  substance  of  British  history,  it  is  no  less 

easy,  no  less  pertinent  and  suggestive,  to  sum  up  French 

history  by  a  parallel  formula,  based    on  considerations 

*  See  pp.  46-48. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     119 

drawn  from  the  geographical  position  of  France  in  rela- 
tion to  other  continental  European  Powers.  Continental 
Europe  is  in  reality  the  western  promontory  of  Asia,  and 
France  is  merely  an  isthmus,  all  but  converting  that  prom- 
ontory into  a  peninsula,  an  isthmus  linking  the  Mediter- 
ranean to  the  Atlantic  and  the  North  Sea.  French  soil  is 
the  central  historic  road  of  civilization  during  at  least 
the  last  three  thousand  years.  All  the  Pisgah  heights 
look  down  upon  her.1  A  great  nation  has  been  evolved 
in  so  exposed  and  coveted  a  corner  of  the  Continent  solely 
by  the  adoption  of  relentlessly  centralizing  methods,  which 
have  determined  the  manners,  the  temperament,  the  char- 
acter— and  the  lack  of  character — of  its  members.  It  is 
because  Frenchmen  have  had  to  live  and  move  and  have 
their  secular  being  at  this  particular  spot  of  the  globe  that 
their  ideals  and  their  problems,  their  history,  in  a  word, 
has  differed  from  that  of  any  other  national  community. 

The  attempt  to  account  for  events  of  the  originality  and 
magnitude  of  the  Postmen's  Strike  and  of  the  Jacquerie 
in  the  vineyards  of  Champagne  implies  an  effort  to  unravel, 
in  the  tangle  of  causes,  those  that  are  general  and  those 
that  are  specific  and  immediate;  to  distinguish  between 
what  Taine  called  the  "  great  acting  and  permanent 
forces  "  and  "  the  donnees  that  are  more  or  less  accidental 
and  determinant  of  change."2 

1  In  a  map  of  the  world  of  about  1050,  known  as  the  map  of  Saint 
SeVerin  (Gascony),  in  which  Rome  is  figured  as  the  virtual  centre  of  the 
oval  universe,  and  in  which  the  lacustrine  sources  of  the  Nile  are 
lavishly  affirmed,  Gallia  occupies  almost  a  full  quarter  of  the  space,  and 
she  is  crowded  with  great  cities;  while  Germany,  the  vague  Regia 
Germania,  is  but  a  meagre  cone-shaped  area  crushed  between  a  distorted 
Danube  and  an  extravagant  Rhine,  and  seemingly  in  danger  of  being 
utterly  squeezed  out  into  the  German  Ocean.  France  preserves  much 
the  same  proportions  in  the  Hereford  map  of  about  1280. 

a  See  letter  of  January  2,  1882,  to  M.  A.  Leroy-Beaulieu:  Revue  des 
deux  Mondes,  April  15,  1907. 


120  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

The  general  cause  of  the  crisis  of  the  State  in  France  is 
the  inability  to  co-ordinate,  in  the  machinery  of  govern- 
ment in  that  country,  two  parts  of  the  machine  which 
ought  to  have  remained  reciprocally  independent:  the 
administrative  and  bureaucratic,  which  is  an  inheritance 
of  the  Napoleonic  regime,  and  the  Parliamentary,  to 
which,  in  conditions  that  must  be  explained,  an  excessive 
importance  has  been  given.  In  France  two  governmental 
systems  have  become  entangled,  creating  a  state  of 
friction  which,  if  it  were  to  continue,  would  ruin  the  entire 
machine.  The  antimony  between  the  Napoleonic  regime 
maintained  by  the  Third  Republic  and  the  system  of 
Parliamentarism  established  by  the  Constitution  of  1875 
would  of  itself  in  the  course  of  time  have  entailed  a  revision 
of  the  Constitution.  But  the  need  for  reform  has  been 
precipitated  by  the  introduction  of  a  new  factor  in  the 
problem,  the  Syndical  Movement. 

It  has  been  seen,  in  connexion  with  the  problem  of  the 
separation  of  Church  and  State  in  France,  that  the 
founders  of  the  Third  Republic,  in  their  effort  to  re- 
organize French  society,  achieved  the  political  part  of 
their  task  but  inadequately,  by  framing  a  Constitution 
which  preserved  the  old  Napoleonic  social  scaffolding,  and 
even  by  adding  fresh  beams  that  rendered  the  political 
and  administrative  functions  more  organic  and  more 
centralized.  A  mere  handful  of  officials  sufficed  to  run 
the  machine.  But  it  was  necessary  not  only  to  chose  a 
select  and  trusty  personnel  whose  business  it  should  be  to 
tend  the  machine,  but  also  to  organize  national  nurseries 
of  civil  servants  knowing  their  Republican  business.  If 
the  Government  of  France  had  consisted  merely  of  the 
bureaux  and  the  Cabinet,  this  operation  of  manning  the 
French  Administration  with  trusty  Republicans  might 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     121 

have  proceeded  without  excessive  friction.  But  the  Con- 
stitution had  concentrated  the  national  sovereignty  in  a 
Chamber  of  Deputies,  and  made  the  Cabinet  dependent 
on  that  all  but  autocratic  assembly.  The  real  work  of 
France  was  done  by  the  bureaux,  and  the  Chamber  held 
the  Cabinet  responsible  for  its  being  well  done.  But  to 
get  that  work  well  done,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
"  representatives  of  the  people  "  it  was  imperative  that  it 
should  be  done  by  persons  on  whom  they  themselves  could 
count.  Moreover,  no  deputy  in  any  country  in  the  world 
but  is  convinced  that  the  interests  of  the  community 
require  his  election  and  re-election.  In  a  country  of 
universal  suffrage,  where  the  power  of  Number  is  pre- 
dominant, the  sheer  numerical  value  of  the  mass- vote  of 
vast  groups  of  civil  servants  is  an  essential  factor  of  the 
problem  of  election.  The  phenomenon  has  been  excel- 
lently illustrated  on  a  vast  scale  in  the  United  States  under 
the  name  of  the  "  spoils  system  " ;  and  the  Pension  system 
of  the  United  States,  where  nearly  200,000,000  dollars1 
are  paid  out  annually,  is  an  equally  pretty  instance  of  the 
same  phenomenon.  Hence  the  tendency  both  to  ingra- 
tiate oneself  with  the  functionaries  and  to  increase  their 
number.  The  processes  of  seduction  are  varied,  ranging 
from  the  classical  method  of  the  sop  to  Cerberus — the 
Income  Tax  Bill  in  France  is  a  misplaced  effort  of  the  kind 

1  The  Outlook,  May  25,  1912.  The  case  of  England  is  worth  citing  in 
comparison.  In  the  last  25  years  the  Civil  Service  Estimates  have 
risen  from  £15,700,000  to  £46,787,873  (exclusive  of  the  Revenue  Depart- 
ments). No  fewer  than  2,700  new  offices  for  the  service  of  the  State 
have  been  created  since  1906.  Under  the  Insurance  Act  large  numbers 
of  similar  appointments  have  been  made,  most  of  them  vnthout  public 
competition.  A  Royal  Commission  on  the  Civil  Service  was  appointed  in 
March  1912,  but  it  remains  to  be  seen  how  far  it  will  succeed  in  clearing 
the  steady  growth  of  official  appointments  from  all  suspicion  of  jobbery 
or  party  preference.  Cf.  leading  article  in  The  Times,  March  15,  1912. 


122  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

— to  outright  intimidation,  or  even  blackmail,  as  was  seen 
in  the  delation  scandals  under  M.  Combes'  Ministry. 
With  Bills  of  demagogic  appeal  the  French  democracy  has 
been  drawn  steadily  on  to  the  point  of  liberty  it  has 
reached  to-day ;  it  has  been  given  the  right  of  free  speech, 
the  right  of  public  meeting,  the  right  of  combination. 
But  at  the  same  time  the  Cabinets  responsible  for  order 
and  discipline  have  striven  strenuously  to  reconcile  these 
liberties  with  the  principle  of  authority  of  which  they  are 
constitutionally  the  guardian.  Some  900,000  servants  of 
the  State,  employes  of  the  nation,  many  of  whom  owe 
their  appointments — that  is  to  say,  their  privileged  exist- 
ence— to  the  favour  of  a  Minister  or  the  intervention  of  a 
politician,  are  expected  to  repay  their  benefactors  by 
ensuring  the  election  or  the  re-election  of  the  individuals 
designated  by  the  Republican  leaders.  That  is,  in  France, 
an  essential  part  of  the  mechanism  of  government,  and 
until  within  the  last  few-  years  it  had  never  occurred  to 
any  French  politician  that  another  system  was  con- 
ceivable. 

In  a  letter  written  in  1881  to  M.  Georges  Saint-Rene 
Taillandier,  Taine  said:  "  Under  the  name  of  sovereignty 
of  the  people  we  possess  an  excessive  centralization,  the 
intervention  of  the  State  in  private  life,  a  system  of  uni- 
versal bureaucracy,  with  all  its  consequences.  Centraliza- 
tion and  universal  suffrage,  these  are  the  two  main 
characteristics  of  contemporary  France,  and  they  have 
given  it  an  organization  which  is  both  apoplectic  and 
anaemic . ' '  What  Tame  meant ,  and  what  no  c  lose  observer 
could  fail  to  note,  was  indeed  the  whole  set  of  "  conse- 
quences "  involved  in  the  simple  fact  that  there  are  some 
eight  millions  of  voters  in  France,  and  that  at  least 
900,000  of  them  are  civil  servants,  employes  of  the  State. 
The  French  expression  Vassiette  au  beurre,  which  refers 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     123 

simply  to  the  desire  of  all  French  citizens  to  be  given  a 
place  at  the  Budgetary  buffet,  and  to  be  allowed  to  "  put 
their  fingers  in  the  pie  "  as  often  and  as  conveniently  as 
they  like,  sums  up  picturesquely  the  Gargantuan  spectacle 
organized  by  the  Republican  caterers  since  the  downfall 
of  the  Empire.  In  the  earlier  period,  as  has  been  seen,  the 
primary-school  teachers  were  enlisted  as  a  disciplined 
Republican  army  throughout  the  French  communes,  and 
were  made  electoral  agents.  The  letter-carriers  were  con- 
verted into  emissaries  of  the  Republican  general  staff. 
The  mayors,  sub-prefects,  and  prefects  were  the  officers 
of  this  immense  army  of  functionaries,  dependent  on  the 
Minister  of  the  Interior,  and  enabling  him  to  "  make  the 
elections."  That  operation  consisted  in  the  exclusion 
from  all  participation  in  the  banquet,  and  from  the  dis- 
tribution of  plums,  of  citizens  who  sulked  or  openly  sought 
to  seize  the  whole  cake  for  themselves.  The  process  of 
government  which  it  implied  was  in  principle  of  an 
extreme  simplicity,  but  in  practice  it  was  astonishingly 
and  amusingly  complicated.  The  main  occupation  of  the 
rulers  of  France  was,  and  still  is,  to  procure  for  their 
clients  as  many  posts  and  advantages  of  every  kind  as 
possible.  This  has  resulted  in  the  multiplication  of 
sinecures,  until  to-day,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  an  eighth 
at  least  of  the  electorate  owe  their  social  consideration,  and 
the  majority  their  economic  well-being,  to  the  successive 
Governments  of  the  last  thirty-five  years.  Favours  of 
the  most  varied  description — the  offer  of  tobacco  shops, 
newspaper  kiosques,  red,  yellow  and  blue  ribbons,  and 
exemptions  from  military  service — are  extended  to 
Frenchmen  who  promise  to  vote  for  the  orthodox  candi- 
date. And  to  this  magnificent  system  of  national  bribery 
has  been  added,  in  the  interests  of  Republican  adminis- 
trative discipline,  the  power  of  intimidation.  If  the 


124  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

mayor  of  a  village  shows  signs  of  reactionary  independence 
— and  all  independence  tends  to  be  classed  as  reactionary 
— the  interests  of  his  commune  are  systematically  ignored 
by  his  chiefs.  The  inhabitants  of  the  township  or  hamlet 
are  made  to  realize  that  the  installation  of  a  telegraph  line 
or  the  construction  of  a  road  are  matters  not  essentially 
of  social  or  economic  importance,  but  of  political  interest.1 
The  habit  has  become  deep-rooted  of  appealing  to  the 
authorities  for  all  those  improvements  which  in  less 
centralized  communities  are  left  to  private  enterprise. 
Individual  enthusiasms,  private  initiative,  are  at  a  dis- 
count. France,  in  fact,  has  advanced  steadily  towards 
that  "apoplectic  "  state  to  which  Taine  alluded;  and  the 
role  of  Parliament  has  been  to  facilitate  rather  than  to 
retard  the  dangerous  moment  of  utter  congestion.  The 
deputy  has  become  perforce  the  ambulant  intermediary 
between  the  central  Government  and  the  electorate.  It 
is  through  his  intervention  that  the  office-seekers,  tuft- 
hunters,  or  the  mere  snobs,  ambitious  to  inscribe  their 
official  dignities  on  their  visiting  cards,  are  able  to  get  at 
the  paid  organizers  of  the  banquet,  the  Ministers  in  office. 
The  deputy  is  tempted  to  become  a  travelling  salesman  of 
political  or  social  favours  and  gimcracks,  hi  return  for 
votes  or  local  influence.  The  illusion  of  his  omnipotence 
has  grown  apace,  until  the  clients  to  whom  he  had  prom- 
ised the  moon  have  become  disillusioned  as  to  his  ability 
to  procure  it  for  them.  The  Government  has  thus  little 
by  little  been  reduced  to  the  undignified  role  of  catering 
to  the  clients  of  its  majority,  and  replying  to  the  sarcasms 
and  repelling  the  assaults  of  the  party  not  invited  to  the 
banquet.  Their  entire  time  is  occupied  in  this  double 
task. 

Happily  the  real  government  of  France  is  in  the  bureaux, 
1  See  La  Republique  et  les  Politiciens,  by  M.  Henry  Leyret. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     125 

the  great  State  administrations.1  For  a  number  of  years 
all  seemed  to  be  going  as  well  as  possible  behind  the 
scenes.  Conservative  by  tradition,  addicted  to  the  bour- 
geois virtues,  animated  by  a  real  spirit  of  strenuous  and 
continuous  labour,  the  great  administrations  would  have 
remained  disciplined  had  it  not  been  for  the  interplay 
of  the  reciprocally  antagonistic  factors  of  French  social 
and  political  evolution:  the  extension  to  the  democracy 
of  the  various  liberties  that  seem  inseparable  from  our 
time,  and  the  effort  to  maintain  a  centralized  monarchical 

1  When  I  first  gave  utterance  to  these  ideas  in  the  National  Review 
of  Hay  1909,  I  was  taxed  with  exaggeration.  Two  years  later,  even 
the  Republican  press  was  ringing  with  them;  they  formed  the  staple 
of  one  of  the  most  brilliant  books  of  political  criticism — Les  Tyrans 
Ridicules,  by  M.  Henry  Leyret — that  has  investigated  the  state  of  the 
French  body-politic  since  Prevost  Paradol.  And  still  a  year  later,  on 
June  25,  1912,  the  Prime  Minister  of  France,  M.  Poincare,  in  a  speech 
in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  on  the  reform  of  the  electoral  law,  used 
language  no  less  vigorous  than  my  own,  to  describe  the  plight  of  the 
representative  of  the  people,  who  is  merely  the  creature  of  a  local 
"  boss  "  indifferent  to  all  the  general  interests  of  France,  so  long  as  the 
petty  inter ets  de  docher  are  zealously  protected.  M.  Poincare  said :  "  La 
reforme  electorate  n'est  pas  seulement  la  representation  sincere  et  juste 
des  partis  politiques,  c'est  surtout  la  renovation  de  certaines  moeurs 
electorales  et  adnainistratives  et  le  changement  d'  habitudes  dont  nous 
avons  etc  et  sommes  tous  les  jours,  tous  plus  ou  moins  victimes.  .  .  . 
L'etroitesse  des  circonscriptions  electorales  met  forcement  les  elus  a  la 
merci  des  influences  locales.  Vous  le  savez  aussi  bien  que  moi.  M. 
Andrieux  annongait  hier  que  les  senateurs  auraient  tot  ou  tard  le  sort 
des  deputes;  mais  j'ai  etc  assez  longtemps  depute  pour  connaitre  les 
conditions  dans  lesquelles,  le  plus  souvent,  nous  sommes  amenes  a 
exercer  ce  mandat.  Nous  sommes  obliges  d' employer  la  plus  grande 
partie  de  notre  activite  a  des  besognesfastidieuses,  a  des  demarches  ingrates, 
et  nous  en  arrivons,  sous  la  pression  des  influences  locales,  d  considerer 
comme  une  necessite  vitale  pour  conserver  notre  mandat,  notre  inference 
quotidienne  dans  toutes  les  questions  administratives.  Et  toutes  les 
responsabilites  se  trouvent  ainsi  deplacees :  les  chefs  des  administrations, 
debordes  par  les  sollicitations,  ont  toutes  les  peines  du  monde  a  def  endre 
leur  propre  impartialite.  C'est  ainsi  que  les  mecontentements  se  multi- 
plient.  Je  ne  f  ais,  en  ce  moment,  que  repeter  tout  haut  ce  que  tout  le 
monde  dit  tout  baa." 


126  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

administration.  There  is  an  immanent  logic  as  there  is 
an  immanent  justice.  The  radical  inconsistency  of  the 
two  conceptions  was  bound  one  day  to  result  in  that 
state  of  general  unrest  which  has  characterized  the  French 
body-politic  and  French  society  during  the  last  seven  or 
eight  years,  and  which  finally,  by  the  happy  accident  of 
the  postmen's  "  strike,"  was  so  localized  that  the  real 
nature  of  the  disorder  could  be  diagnosed  as  an  acute 
attack  of  articular  rheumatism  in  one  of  the  great  arms 
of  the  French  administration,  the  result  of  long-protracted 
and  silent  secretions  of  a  gouty  or  arthritic  character, 
which  must  be  ruthlessly  combated  at  whatever  cost. 

Now,  in  a  nation  as  completely  organic  as  that  of 
France,  an  organism  so  compact,  so  highly  developed  as 
regards  specialization  of  function,  where  everyone  is  either 
a  part  of  the  machinery  of  administration  or  of  govern- 
ment, or  a  candidate  for  participation  in  administrative 
responsibilities,  a  nation  which  topological  causes  have 
made  more  homogeneous  than  any  other  modem  people- 
in  such  a  nation,  where  almost  all  the  quarrels  are  only 
family  feuds,  the  introduction  of  the  right  to  combine  was 
the  introduction  of  a  subtle  poison  bound  to  transform 
the  whole  internal  economy;  and  Parliament,  instead  of 
finding  the  necessary  antidotes  for  the  secret  ravages 
produced,  seemed  to  be  blindly,  perversely  perfecting  an 
ideal  bouillon  de  culture. 

How  did  it  set  about  the  concoction  of  this  dangerous 
mixture  ?  How  did  it  manage  to  create  so  favourable  a 
milieu  for  the  rapid  evolution  of  the  malady  ?  The  answers 
to  these  questions  will  give  the  efficient  cause  of  the  present 
crisis. 

In  the  first  place,  the  deputies  representing  the  Republic 
were  obliged  by  the  attitude  of  the  Catholics,  and  of  the 
parties  loyal  to  successive  Pretenders,  to  defend  their 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     127 

interests  and  those  of  the  new  regime  against  the  Church 
and  against  Reaction.  This  contest  absorbed  the  atten- 
tion of  the  Republic  so  long  and  so  completely  that  rela- 
tively little  time  was  left  for  the  consideration  of  that 
prudent  policy  of  social  reform  which  figures  seductively 
on  Radical  programmes  down  even  to  that  of  M.  Clemen- 
ceau  in  November  1906.  Hypnotized  by  these  grave 
questions  of  self-preservation — and  the  organization  of 
secular  education  was  an  integral  part  of  the  struggle 
against  influences  hostile  to  the  Republic — the  Republican 
Cabinets  were  too  strongly  tempted  to  ignore  the  funda- 
mental changes  which  were  taking  place  in  what  Gam- 
betta  called  the  nouvelles  couches  sociales,  and  in  the 
economic  relations  between  the  bourgeoisie  and  the  people, 
as  a  result  of  the  new  liberties  which  the  Republican  party 
had  bestowed  on  the  democracy.  There  had  not  been 
wanting  prophets,  however,  Republican  leaders  of  great 
distinction  and  political  sense,  like  Waldeck-Rousseau, 
who  foresaw  the  vast  development  to  which  the  Syndical 
Movement  was  predestined.  These  men,  who  perceived 
that  the  law  of  1884  on  professional  trade  unions  created 
an  alien  influence,  destructive  of  almost  all  the  traditional 
notions  on  which  French  society  and  the  French  adminis- 
tration had  subsisted  for  a  century,  nevertheless  recog- 
nized that  thus,  and  thus  only,  could  that  society  evolve 
amid  the  new  economic  conditions.  And  the  greatest  of 
them,  the  statesman  responsible  for  the  law  of  1884, 
Waldeck-Rousseau  himself,  sought  untiringly  to  convince 
his  countrymen  that,  to  prevent  the  syndicates  from 
becoming  a  State  within  a  State,  supplementary  legislation 
was  required.  In  a  speech  delivered  at  Roubaix  in  1898, 
before  six  thousand  working  men,  Waldeck-Rousseau 
referred  to  the  law  of  1884  (of  which  more  recent  legisla- 
tion tolerating  associations  and  combination  in  the 


128  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Government  offices  is  but  the  dangerous  logical  develop- 
ment) as  "undes  meilleurs  chapitres  de  ma  vie."  And  he 
remarked,  in  a  note  of  philosophy  echoed  over  and  over 
again  in  La  Melee  Sociale  of  M.  Clemenceau : — 

"  If  it  be  believed,  as  I  believe,  that  it  is  with  society  as  with  indi- 
viduals, in  that  they  obey  a  positive  law  of  growth,  that  they  inevitably 
advance  in  the  path  of  progress,  then  it  will  be  seen  that  we  were  well 
inspired  in  sweeping  away  the  obstacles  in  the  path  of  the  labouring 
classes  and  in  releasing  them  from  the  dilemma  of  resignation  or 
revolt." 

But  he  went  on  to  point  out  that  the  professional  syndi- 
cates must  be  allowed  to  acquire  property,  that,  within  the 
immediate  future,  "  il  faudrait  que  le  capital  travaille  et, 
par  une  reciprocite  certaine,  que  le  travail  possede,"  in 
order  that  the  new  trade  unions  might  bring  about  what 
he  regarded  as  the  necessary  solution,  namely,  "  the  par- 
ticipation of  the  wage-earning  class  in  industrial  and 
commercial  property."  How  was  this  great  Republican 
leader  heeded  ?  The  French  Parliament  frivolously  shut 
its  eyes  to  the  danger,  and  refused  to  look  the  facts  in  the 
face.  Yet  these  facts  were  numerous  and  startling  enough 
to  arouse  the  most  indifferent. 

The  details  of  the  rapid  progress  of  the  trade  union 
movement  in  France  since  1884,  a  progress  leading  up  to 
the  federation  in  1895  of  the  various  unions  in  a  vast 
Confederation  Generate  du  Travail,  with  the  "  general 
strike  "  and  "  direct  action  "  (in  distinction  from  Parlia- 
mentary action)  as  their  tactics  of  battle — these  details 
have  no  place  in  a  study  dealing  with  the  general  aspects 
of  a  crisis  which,  as  has  already  been  seen,  is  political 
and  social  rather  than  economic.  The  facts  so  unwisely 
neglected  by  the  French  Parliament  were  the  signs  of 
revolt  in  the  great  army  of  civil  servants  of  whom  the 
deputies  were  themselves  the  creatures — indications  which 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     129 

a  prudent  statesmanship  would  have  scrutinized  with  the 
utmost  concern.  First  there  was  the  congress  of  school 
teachers,  opened  to  the  strains  of  the  Internationale,1 
and  conducted  in  a  spirit  of  menacing  independence. 
Then  the  personnel  in  the  naval  arsenals  began  to  agitate. 
At  Lyons  there  was  a  strike  of  policemen.  In  Bordeaux 
and  Paris  the  hospital  assistants  demanded  less  work  and 
higher  wages.  A  kind  of  epidemic  of  "  syndicomania  " 
began  to  rage  in  France  among  the  civil  servants,  who, 
by  a  law  voted  in  1901,  were  granted  the  right  to  com- 
bine without  being  expressly  given  the  right  to  strike. 
At  present  there  are  in  France  at  least  488  "  Professional 
Associations  of  State  Employes "  in  the  big  central 
Government  offices,  and  202  unions  representing  the  State 
employes  in  the  match  factories,  the  tobacco  factories, 
the  Mint,  the  State  railways,  etc.,  etc.  These  various 
unions  are  united  in  a  general  federation,  and  it  is  this 
colossal  new  force,  which  has  been  encouraged  by  the 
State,  that  was  suddenly  brought  to  the  notice  of  the 
public  by  the  Postmen's  Strike  of  March,  1909,  and  finally 
revealed  in  all  its  virulence  by  the  outburst  of  anti-mili- 
tarism, and  even  by  mutiny,  in  the  Eastern  garrison  towns 
in  May  1913,  when  certain  syndicalists  under  the  colours 
obeyed  the  orders  of  the  Paris  junta,  protesting  against  the 
prolongation  of  military  service  from  two  to  three  years. 
This  grouping  of  State  employes  took  place  so  rapidly 
that  the  vigilance  of  even  the  professional  politicians  was 
surprised.  When  M.  Clemenceau  took  office  his  pro- 
gramme contained  the  following  passage : — 

"  As  regards  professional  trade  unions,  the  Government  will  propose 
to  you  to  introduce  into  the  law  of  March  21,  1884,  the  improvements 
which  past  experience  has  shown  to  be  necessary.  The  time  appears  to 
the  Government  to  have  arrived  for  increasing  the  civil  capacity  of  the 

1  See  p.  227. 


130  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

trade  unions.  ...  At  the  same  time  the  Government  will  submit  to 
you  a  Bill  determining  the  status  of  civil  servants.  This  Bill,  while 
granting  them  liberty  of  combination,  and  guaranteeing  them  against 
arbitrary  action,  will  ensure  the  steady  accomplishment  of  their  duty 
to  the  State,  which  is  responsible  for  the  public  administrative  services." 

That  is  to  say,  M.  Clemenceau  showed  himself  alive  to  the 
disquieting  character  of  the  movement  among  the  State 
employes :  he  announced  his  intention  of  legislating  in  the 
spirit  of  the  warning  of  his  predecessor  Waldeck-Rousseau, 
and  he  promised  the  servants  of  the  State  that  their  long- 
ignored  demand  to  possess  a  definite  charter  "  guarantee- 
ing them  against  arbitrary  action  "  should  at  last  be 
granted.  That  was  eight  years  ago.  Since  then  nothing 
has  been  done  to  realize  this  promise.  The  familiar 
methods  of  favouritism,  due  to  the  necessity  of  satisfying 
the  claims  of  some  eight  hundred  deputies  and  senators, 
still  continue.  In  more  than  one  speech  M.  Clemenceau 
fulminated  against  the  shameless  intervention  of  the 
politicians  and  their  outrageous  demands;  his  protests 
and  those  of  his  successors  were  necessarily  vain.  In 
order  to  live  they  had  to  do  as  their  predecessors  had 
done — to  satisfy  the  "majority";  while  that  majority, 
to  be  re-elected,  has  to  distribute  ribbons  and  crosses, 
baubles  and  places.  The  Cabinet  is  the  dispenser  of  these 
things,  and  it  has  no  choice  but  to  turn,  with  the  other 
wheels  and  cogwheels,  in  the  same  set  of  vicious  circles, 
until  the  whole  machine  breaks  down.  The  machine, 
however,  has  now  become  clogged  and  sadly  requires 
cleaning.  One  of  the  abuses  that  has  most  irritated  the 
State  employes  of  all  ranks  is  the  scandalous  way  in  which 
each  new  Minister  has  introduced  into  the  service,  under 
the  guise  of  attaches  to  his  Cabinet,  a  little  band  of 
parasites  who  block  the  path  of  normal  promotion  to  all 
the  functionaries  of  that  branch  of  the  administration. 
Fifteen  years  ago  a  Minister's  Cabinet  included  at  most 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     131 

but  two  or  three  functionaries.  Nowadays  a  Minister  is 
supposed  to  be  protected  against  the  importunate  by  a 
directeur  de  Cabinet,  a  chef  de  Cabinet,  two  or  three  chefs- 
adjoints,  a  few  sous-chefs,  a  chef  du  secretariat  particiilier, 
a  certain  number  of  chefs-adjoints  au  secretariat  particulier, 
one  or  more  private  secretaries,  and  a  score  of  attaches. 
This  phalanx  of  officials,  who  are  mere  political  parasites, 
usually  destitute  of  technical  knowledge  and  training. 
are  rightly  regarded  by  the  trained  servants  of  the  ad- 
ministration as  interlopers  standing  in  the  way  of  their 
automatic  promotion.  Instead  of  protecting  the  Minister 
against  the  machinations  of  the  deputies  they  provide 
fresh  channels  of  access  to  the  powers  that  be.  There 
results  from  this  state  of  things  a  scandalous  injustice, 
which  can  be  redressed  by  appeal  to  the  Conseil  d'fitat 1 
— if  the  civil  servant  chooses  to  risk  calling  down  upon 
himself  the  indignation  of  his  superiors.  But  such 
audacity  is  rare,  and  the  world  of  functionaries  has  finally 
invented  a  more  effective  way  of  abolishing  these  iniquities 
by  uniting  for  common  action  in  the  syndicates,  or  pro- 
fessional unions,  some  of  which  are  claiming  the  right  to 
strike,  but  the  majority  of  which  are  agitating  solely  with 
a  view  to  thrusting  the  politicians  back  into  their  own 
domain,  and  to  obtaining  some  form  of  charter  which  will 
protect  civil  servants  against  arbitrary  authority,  nepot- 
ism and  favouritism. 

Such  are  the  general  causes  that  have  brought  about 
the  grave  crisis  in  the  French  State.  The  malady  from 
which  it  suffers  is  a  confusion  of  powers  leading  to  in- 
coherency  in  the  function  of  government.  Representa- 
tive government  in  France  has  become  unworthy  of  the 
name,  owing  to  its  having  developed  in  conjunction  with 
a  bureaucratic  Napoleonic  administration.  The  key- 

i  See  p.  145. 


132  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

stone  of  the  system  is  a  Cabinet  chosen  from  the  little 
oligarchy  of  Parliamentarians,  who  themselves  depend 
for  their  existence  on  the  very  functionaries  they  originally 
created.  The  executive  authority  has  tended  slowly  but 
steadily  to  lose  all  prestige.  The  remedy  for  this  situation 
has  not  yet  been  found.  But  not  for  twenty  years  have 
problems  of  statecraft  and  politics  aroused  such  curiosity 
in  France  as  they  are  arousing  to-day.  The  entire  nation 
is  alive  to  the  real  nature  of  the  crisis,  and  resolved  to  find 
a  solution  for  it.  The  solutions  proposed  are  being  dis- 
cussed not  merely  at  the  Ecole  des  Sciences  Politiques  and 
in  the  Press,  but  by  all  French  citizens.  France  has 
already  entered  on  an  era  of  active  political  and  economic 
reform.  They  who  interpreted  the  pronunciamiento  of 
the  Post  Office  employes  as  the  forerunner  of  revolution 
betrayed  their  ignorance  of  the  real  factors  which  have 
gone  to  the  making  of  contemporary  France  and  are  to 
determine  the  trend  of  that  country's  evolution.  That 
strike  was  a  phenomenon  of  reorganization,  or,  as  Proud- 
hon  would  say,  of  recomposition,  not  of  decomposition. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  scenes  of  civil  war  in  Cham- 
pagne, although  those  events,  again,  flattered  the  in- 
eradicable conviction  of  foreigners1  that  France  was 

1  The  foreigner  most  prone  to  such  illusions  is  the  German.  Dr. 
Gustave  Lebon  cites,  in  the  Revue  Bleue  of  May  26,  1906,  a  significant 
utterance  of  a  German  professor:  "  We  shall  perhaps  think  of  making 
war  on  you  when  your  pacifists,  your  internationalists,  your  anti- mili- 
tarists, and  other  imbeciles  of  that  sort,  will  have  sufficiently  weakened 
you,  and  destroyed  in  your  souls  the  idea  of  patrie  which  makes  us  so 
strong. . . .  We  shall  merely  wait — and  we  shall  not  have  to  wait  long — 
until  your  divisions  and  your  anarchy  have  made  you  incapable  of 
self-defence."  When,  in  May,  1913,  scandalous  acts  of  insubordination 
occurred  in  some  of  the  French  regiments  (p.  129)  the  jubilation  of  the 
chauvinist  German  press  admirably  enlightened  even  the  French 
radicals  as  to  the  danger  of  allowing  the  Federal  Confederation  of  Labour 
to  continue,  uncontrolled,  its  anti-patriotic  campaign  against  the  vital 
interests  of  the  French  community.  (See  p.  147.) 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     133 

going  to  the  legendary  dogs ;  that  the  tricolour  was  already 
flying  from  the  stern  of  Charon's  bark,  and  the  Republic 
shortly  to  be  judged  and  found  wanting.  The  civil  war 
in  the  Eastern  departments  was  but  one  of  a  rapidly 
accumulating  series  of  untoward  events,  signs  of  an 
apparent  national  disintegration  which  again  led  the 
Royalist  and  Imperialist  pretenders — those  saviours  of 
society  always  ready  to  start  up  in  their  absurd  jack-in- 
the-box  fashion  on  any  and  every  pretext — to  sign  mani- 
festos and  galvanize  their  apathetic  followers  into  active 
opposition.  Even  certain  leaders  of  the  Republic  caught 
the  contagion  and  talked  openly  of  the  possibility  of  a 
real  revolution,  while  more  than  one  French  journal 
raised  the  question:  "Whither  are  we  going  ?  To  the 
King  ?  To  the  Emperor  ?  Or  towards  the  Fourth  Re- 
public ?" 

The  unrest  now  pervading  French  Society,  the  out- 
spoken dissatisfaction  with  the  present  political  and  social 
regime,  is  a  new  phase  of  French  life ;  a  new  phase,  that 
is,  under  the  Third  Republic,  for  nothing  like  it  has  been 
witnessed  in  France  during  the  last  forty  years.  Not 
Boulangism,  nor  the  Panama  and  Dreyfus  scandals,  can 
be  cited  to  the  contrary.  The  pessimism  and  unrest  of 
France  have,  however,  contemporary  parallels.1  As  a 

1  Unrest,  social  disorder,  is,  of  course,  a  general  phenomenon.  It  is 
becoming  manifest  throughout  the  world  in  proportion  as  that  social 
order,  which  it  is  the  business  of  the  State  to  preserve,  and  which  is  the 
necessary  condition  of  the  normal  working  of  the  laws  that  have  hitherto 
determined  the  economic  organism  of  our  modern  civilization,  is  being 
imperilled  both  by  the  weakness  of  Governments  (sentimentalism, 
humanitarianism,  indiscipline,  revolutionary  idealism),  and  by  the 
tyranny  of  Governments  (state  intervention  and  state  socialism, 
demagogic  legislation,  inspired  by  mystical  notions  of  solidarity,  privi- 
leges accorded  to  syndicalism).  A  French  conseiller  d'Etat  and  member 
of  the  Institute,  M.  Colson,  has  admirably  developed  in  a  recent  book, 
Organisms  Economique  ct  Decordrc  Social  (Flammarion,  1912),  the  ideas 
and  principles  to  which  the  present  writer  gave  expression,  nineteen 


134  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

social  and  political  phenomenon  it  is,  for  instance,  if  not 
exactly  of  the  same  nature  as  the  unrest  and  pessimism  of 
the  United  States,  yet  potentially  to  be  compared  with  it. 
In  both  countries  at  this  hour  the  same  moral  hypo- 
chondria is  engendering  the  same  malarial  visions.  When 
a  senator  from  Iowa,  an  ex-Governor  of  his  State,  says 
in  an  address  to  the  students  of  the  Washington  College 
of  Law,  "We  are  living  in  a  period  of  revolution;  our 
institutions  at  this  day  are  in  the  balance,"  his  voice  is 
pitched  in  the  same  key  as  those  of  a  Millevoye,  a  Dru- 
mont,  a  Henri  Beranger,  a  Poincare,  a  Maurras  and  a 
Jaures.  Yet  all  these  utterances  (since  they  are  not 
isolated,  nor  confined  to  any  political  party,  but  charac- 
teristic of  the  feeling  of  the  several  audiences  to  which 
they  appeal)  are  the  most  fertile  ground  for  optimism. 

In  France,  at  this  moment,  there  is  a  widespread  craving 
for  positive  reform;  a  growing  insistence  that  something 
must  be  done  to  purify  French  political  and  administra- 
tive life;  a  resolve  to  effect  certain  radical  changes,  how- 
ever drastic,  and  at  whatever  sacrifice  of  persons,  in  the 
relations  of  the  several  parts  of  the  great  political  and 
administrative  machine ;  a  repudiation  of  French  ideology 
and  a  revival  of  idealism  in  the  English  sense  of  the  word ; 
a  spirit  of  relentless  and  vigilant  criticism,  and  a  moral 
purpose  which  may  be  described  as  the  forerunner  of  a 
French  Renaissance.  But  in  seeking  to  comprehend  this 

years  ago,  in  the  chapter  entitled  "  Democracy  "  in  his  book  Patriotism 
and  Science.  In  presence  of  the  forms  assumed  by  social  disorder  during 
the  last  ten  years  in  England  France,  Germany  and  the  United  States, 
it  may  be  claimed  that  this  book  was  in  many  respects  a  forecast. 
Such  is  the  complexity  of  the  social  and  economic  movements  of  the 
present  moment,  that  one  must  ride  upon  a  cherub  to  secure  any  real 
perspective  of  the  Present;  but  twenty  years  ago  a  seed  could  serve  the 
seer — and  the  seeds  of  the  future  unrest  were  visible  enough  to  any  one 
who  took  the  trouble  merely  to  light  a  candle. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    135 

new  state  of  things,  foreign  observers  easily  go  wrong. 
They  should  always  'begin  by  understanding  that  the 
"  pretenders  "  who  would  fain  profit  by  the  dissatisfac- 
tion of  France  with  many  of  her  existing  institutions  to 
substitute  for  the  Republic  a  Monarchy  or  an  Empire, 
are  following,  in  their  familiar  way,  evanescent  will-o'- 
the-wisps.  The  reforms  which  are  destined  to  come  will 
be  of  the  nature  of  a  readjustment  of  the  Republican 
Constitution  to  modern  conditions,  not  of  the  upsetting 
of  the  Republic.  The  dried  fruit  of  the  Old  Regime  is 
no  longer  succulent  to  the  French  palate.  In  spite  of  its 
occasional  mephitic  iridescence,  it  is  the  deadest  of  the 
dead  fruits  of  a  Dead  Sea.  No  one  has  any  real  hope 
of  restoring  what  Andre  Chenier  was  wont  to  call  "  Gothic 
institutions." 

It  is  impossible,  however,  to  exaggerate  the  admirable 
and  useful  role  of  certain  leaders  of  the  anti-Republican 
opposition  in  helping  to  create  discontent  in  France  and  to 
transmute  that  discontent  into  a  force  capable  of  destroy- 
ing grave  abuses.  The  services  rendered  to  French 
society,  and  even  to  the  Republic,  by  M.  Charles  Maurras, 
the  Royalist  leader,  are  invaluable. 

It  has  been  seen  that  Government  in  France  is  the 
tyrannical  monopoly  of  a  minority.  For  a  great  many 
years  one  of  the  classical  methods  of  the  Republican 
system  of  government  was  to  maintain  a  state  of  war  in 
France.  The  Republicans  found  ready  to  their  hands 
an  incomparably  compact  and  centralized  Administration, 
and  their  main  object  was  to  hold  the  citadel  of  that 
Administration,  and  to  man  all  its  bastions  and  out- 
works by  sworn  members  of  their  party.  They  treated 
the  rank  and  file  of  the  nation  as  enemies  who  could  not 
be  trusted.  To  consolidate  their  troops  the  Republican 
leaders  invented  the  useful  bug-a-boo  of  an  anti-Re- 


136  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

publican  and  anti-Constitutional  opposition.  Not  that 
the  nucleus  of  such  an  opposition  did  not  really  exist,  but 
the  utility  of  preserving  it,  the  advisability  of  exasper- 
ating it  by  methods  of  persecution,  in  order  to  cultivate 
the  illusion  in  the  country  that  Republican  order  was 
being  chronically  menaced,  was  the  accepted  device  for 
the  preservation  of  Republican  power.  The  disinterested 
sporadic  efiorts  of  this  or  that  leader — Gambetta,  Spuller, 
Meline,  Briand — to  dismantle  the  Republican  donjon,  to 
substitute  Republican  for  Feudal  rule,  to  make  the 
Republic  a  real  Republic,  in  which  all  France  should  have 
the  same  rights  as  the  compact  little  garrison  in  the 
citadel  to  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  have 
been  systematically  misunderstood,  not  to  say  regarded 
as  treason,  by  the  professional  politicians;  and  mean- 
while, behind  the  scenes,  the  privileged  troops  manning 
the  battlements  have  battened  off  the  assiette  au  beurre, 
corrupted  French  character  by  the  distribution  of  "  places" 
to  idle  functionaries,  bought,  thus  indirectly,  the  votes 
of  their  clients,  and  made  the  Republic  no  longer  worthy 
of  the  name.  Fear  of  the  foreigner  is  the  great  force  that 
instantly  assured  to  the  Poincare  Ministry  a  national 
popularity  and  authority  which  none  of  its  predecessors, 
not  even  the  Clemenceau  Ministry,  had  possessed  since 
the  early  days  of  the  Republic.  It  was,  moreover,  be- 
cause M.  Poincare,  by  his  insistence  on  a  policy  of  electoral 
reform,  and  by  his  prudent  and  firm  defence  of  French 
interests  during  the  Balkan  war,  had  come  to  personify 
French  national  aspirations,  that,  on  the  eve  of  the 
anniversary  (January  18,  1871)  of  the  foundation  of  the 
German  Empire  in  the  Galerie  des  Glaces  at  Versailles, 
he  was  chosen  President  of  the  Republic  by  an  Assembly 
finally  respectful  of  the  national  will. 
There  is  no  such  thing  in  France  as  a  constitutional 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     137 

opposition,  because  French  "  parliamentarism  "  is  in  no 
particular  such  a  method  of  democratic  government  as  is 
connoted  by  the  words  "  parliamentary  government."  In 
view  of  the  fact  that  France  is  not  a  Monarchy,  it  may 
be  technically  correct,  as  it  is  certainly  convenient,  to  call 
it  a  Republic;  but  its  government  is  obviously  not  that 
of  a  democratic  Republic.  Its  government  is  not,  as  in 
England,  a  parliamentary  government  by  the  device  of 
well-defined  parties  appealing  directly  to  the  Democracy, 
nor  yet,  as  in  the  United  States,  is  it  the  government  of 
the  people,  by  the  people,  and  for  the  people,  of  the 
Consular  Republican  form.  Yet  it  was  undoubtedly  the 
object  of  the  Constitution  of  1875  to  establish  Parlia- 
mentary Government.  How  happens  it  that  that  object 
has  never  been  attained  ? 

The  Constitution  of  1875  was  a  concoction  of  the 
Orleanist  party.  That  party  hoped  by  easy  stages  to  re- 
store the  Monarchy,  and  it  counted  on  election  by  the  Con- 
gress of  a  Comte  de  Paris  or  a  Due  d'Aumale  as  President 
of  the  "  Republic,"  in  succession  to  Marshal  McMahon. 
As  an  independent  critic  of  singular  perspicacity,  Monsieur 
Georges  Thiebaud,  has  pointed  out  in  his  instructive  book, 
Les  Secrets  du  Regne,  there  were  precedents  for  this 
method,  notably  the  expedient  used  in  1 830  for  the  choice 
of  Louis  Philippe,  after  Lafayette,  on  the  balcony  of  the 
Hotel-de-  Ville,  had  baptized  him  La  Meilleure  des  Rcpufo- 
liques.  Once  the  majority  in  the  two  Chambers  were 
rendered  unmistakably  monarchical,  it  was  held  that  it 
would  not  be  difficult  to  utilize  the  clause  of  the  Constitu- 
tion which  permits  revision,1  in  order  to  restore  the  Old 
Regime  in  favour  of  the  younger  branch  of  the  French 

1  This  point  has  been  clearly  brought  out  by  Dr.  Woodrow  Wilson, 
President  of  the  United  States,  in  his  remarkable  study  in  comparative 
politics,  The  State  (D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.),  pp.  216  218. 


138  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Bourbons.  The  Orleanist  project  failed.  But  the  Royal- 
ist Constitution  remained;  and  most  of  the  woes  from 
which  France  is  suffering  to-day  are  due  to  two  facts: 
first,  the  fact  that  she  is  still  living  under  a  Constitution 
which,  while  it  is  admirably  adapted  to  thwarting  the 
possible  rise  of  a  dictator  of  the  Napoleonic  type,  is 
utterly  inadequate  for  the  realization  of  the  democratic 
dream  of  Representative  Government,  according  to  an 
ideal  of  liberty  and  of  social  and  economic  progress  by  free 
discussion  under  the  party  system ;  secondly,  the  fact  that 
while  her  political  Constitution  is  Royalist  her  Administra- 
tive machinery  is  centralized  and  Napoleonic.  It  is  a 
psychological  impossibility  to  reconcile  for  purposes  of 
human  government  systems  so  disparate  as  this  Royalist 
Constitution  of  1875  and  the  Republico-Napoleonic  Ad- 
ministration. The  friction  caused  by  the  effort  to  make 
the  Constitution  and  that  Administration  work  in  har- 
mony has  now  assumed  the  dimensions  of  a  scandal.  It 
accounts  for  the  present  unrest  throughout  French  society. 
It  has,  in  fact,  brought  about  a  Constitutional  crisis. 

French  official  historians  hesitate  frankly  to  acknow- 
ledge the  fact — which  is  as  little  familiar  to  the  average 
Frenchman  as  to  the  foreigner — that  the  Constitution  of 
the  Third  Republic  was  never  intended  to  serve  any  other 
end  than  the  re-establishment  of  the  Monarchy.  Yet  such 
is  the  case,  and  it  would  be  difficult  to  devise  a  system  of 
government  less  well  adapted  to  the  organization  of  a 
modern  democracy.  The  civic  and  social  irresponsibility 
which  their  Administrative  regime  has  been  creating 
among  Frenchmen  ever  since  the  First  Empire  (vide, 
among  a  score  of  testimonies,  the  recent  books  of  Monsieur 
Faguet :  Le  Culte  de  I' 'Incompetence  and  .  .  .  et  VHorreur 
des  Eesponsabilitcs)  has  been  enhanced  by  the  political 
Constitution  under  which  they  have  been  living. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     139 

During  the  last  thirty  years  public  opinion  in  civilized 
communities  has  demanded,  at  all  events,  two  things  of 
a  government :  Stability  and  Authority ;  and,  of  the  two, 
Authority  is  the  more  necessary  and  the  more  useful. 
For  some  time  now  in  France — save  during  the  briefest 
of  intervals — there  has  existed  neither  the  one  nor  the 
other.  During  what  one  of  the  most  original  of  modern 
French  writers,  M.  Charles  Peguy,  has  called  the  "  mys- 
tical period  "  of  the  Republic  (by  which  is  meant  the 
period  of  disinterested  Republican  idealism  preceding  the 
modern  political  period  of  caucus  bickerings),  the  solid 
conservatism  and  ingrained  loyalty  of  the  French  nation 
engendered  respect  for  the  Republican  rulers  and  sur- 
rounded them  with  a  halo  of  Authority.  Gradually,  how- 
ever, the  inadequacy  of  the  governmental  machinery  in 
France,  its  incapacity  to  provide  the  taxpayer  with  the 
kinds  of  product  which  any  political  and  administrative 
machinery  worthy  of  the  name  is  reasonably  expected  to 
turn  out,  has  been  revealed  to  the  entire  reflecting  nation. 
In  the  United  States,  Authority  is  to  a  certain  extent 
secured  by  the  very  terms  of  the  Constitution,  since  the 
Head  of  the  State,  who  is  the  elect  of  the  nation,  and  who 
represents  the  nation  as  a  whole,  is  held  responsible  for 
the  management  of  affairs.  In  France,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  subtle  aim  of  the  Constitution  of  1875  was,  as  has  been 
seen,  to  provide  a  means  of  transition  from  the  Republican 
form  of  government  to  a  regime  of  Constitutional 
Monarchy  with  Parliamentary  Government.  But  the 
device  by  which  this  evolution  was  to  take  place,  the 
election  of  the  Head  of  the  State  by  a  Congress  com- 
posed of  Senators  and  Deputies,  has  become  the  regular 
method  of  the  election  of  the  President  of  the  Republic. 
The  consequence,  as  has  already  been  pointed  out,  is  that 
the  French  President,  instead  of  representing  the  nation, 


140  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

is  the  creature  of  Parliamentary  groups.  He  is  irre- 
sponsible, and  he  plays  no  known  active  or  essential  role 
in  the  government  of  his  country.  There  is  in  France, 
therefore,  no  supreme  arbiter  of  parties.  Nor  are  there 
any  parties,  for  the  simple  and  curious  reason  that  the 
opposition  is  anti-constitutional — that  is,  unconstitutional. 
The  Republican  politicians  have  managed,  little  by  little, 
to  oust  their  Orleanist  accomplices  and  to  assume  the 
direction,  which  they  undertake  by  relays,  of  the  French 
Administration.  A  party  in  office  which  regards  as  un- 
constitutional any  organized  legal  resistance  to  its  party 
programme  necessarily  becomes  tyrannical.  A  regime  in 
which  there  is  no  constitutional  opposition  is  anything 
that  one  may  like  to  call  it,  but  is,  at  all  events,  just  the 
opposite  of  a  regime  of  party  government,  and  bears  no 
resemblance  to  "  parliamentary  government." 

The  old  Republicans  of  the  idealistic  Republican  period, 
a  period  when  Republicanism  was  a  religious  ideal  and  not 
merely  a  cant  catchword  of  politics,1  cherished  a  faith  in 
Universal  Suffrage  which  may  almost  be  described  as 
sublime ;  and  it  was  they,  and  not  the  reactionaries,  who 
extolled  an  electoral  system  based  on  the  Scrutin  de  Liste. 
"  If  you  are  living  under  a  Republic,"  says  Gambetta  in 
1881,  "you  owe  the  fact  to  the  system  of  Scrutin  de 
Liste,"  and  he  went  on  to  say,  "  the  Scrutin  d'arrondisse- 
ment  is  a  weapon  forged  by  your  enemies,  a  weapon  which 
was  used  to  destroy  you  together  with  the  Republic." 
Thus  when,  in  connexion  with  the  reform  of  French  insti- 
tutions inscribed  in  the  Constitution  of  1875,  the  electoral 
law  was  discussed,  and  when  357  members  of  the  National 
Assembly  voted  against  the  maintenance  of  the  Scrutin  de 

1  "  La  R6publique,  en  tant  qu'idee  politiquc,  en  tant  qu'idee  '  force  ' 
est  finie  "  (Charles  Maurras,  L" Action  Franfaise,  May  17,  1912).  This 
is  a  royalist  verdict,  justifiable,  I  believe,  if  taken  in  the  sense  which 
M.  P6guy  and  the  present  writer  have  given  to  the  idea. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     141 

Liste,  and  326  voted  in  favour  of  that  system,  an  analysis 
of  the  division  showed  that  the  majority  was  composed 
of  Bonapartists  and  Royalists  and  that  the  Republicans 
were  in  the  minority.  Why  did  the  reactionary  political 
forces  wish  to  re-establish  the  Scrutin  d'arrondissement  ? 
Solely  because  it  seemed  to  them  the  only  way  to  maintain 
the  supremacy  of  individual  influence  and  of  personal 
prestige  in  the  constituencies.  The  Scrutin  d'arrondisse- 
ment left  the  door  open  to  all  the  classical  forms  of 
political,  social  and  financial  corruption.  It  was  the  only 
method  enabling  the  central  authority  to  act  directly  upon 
the  electorate  by  means  of  the  local  functionaries.  It 
would  be  easy  to  prove — and  M.  Henry  Leyret  has  already 
drawn  attention  to  this  fact1 — that  although  the  Republi- 
cans were  victorious  at  the  Seize  Mai  and  during  the 
Boulangist  episode,  their  victory  was  achieved  not  because, 
but  in  spite  of,  the  Scrutin  d'arrondissement.  The  famous 
phalanx  of  the  363,  who  were  opposed  by  the  Elysee,  the 
Government,  the  Administration,  the  upper  middle  class 
and  the  leading  business  interests,  had  the  country  behind 
them.  In  1877  the  very  existence  of  the  Republic  was  at 
stake,  and  what  happened  was  that  its  existence  was 
made  the  object  of  a  national  plebiscite.  In  fact,  for 
Napoleon  III,  as  for  the  Orleanist  party  of  1875,  the 
Scrutin  d'arrondissement  was  in  favour  because  it  was  an 
excellent  system  of  corruption  and  a  perfect  device  for 
oppression.  It  is  for  this  reason,  and  not  for  any  other — 
it  is  because,  owing  to  the  predominance  thereby  given  to 
parochial  over  national  interests,  all  French  deputies  tend 
to  be  the  delegates  of  local  wire-pullers  and  are  expected 
to  obey  the  orders  of  their  party  leaders  and  their  party 
caucuses2 — that  the  Radical  Republicans,  who  have  been 

1  Le  Temps,  June  7,  1911.     See  his  book,  Les  Tyrans  Ridicules. 

2  Cf .  the  period  of  the  Jacksonian  Democracy  in  America. 


142  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

governing  France  for  the  last  ten  years,  and  have  little 
by  little  made  the  constituencies  into  "  rotten  boroughs  " 
that  are  poisoning  France  (mares  stagnantes,  to  quote 
M.  Briand),  have  fought  so  strenuously  the  project  of 
electoral  reform  for  the  re-establishment  of  the  Scrutin  de 
Lisle,  with  the  representation  of  minorities. 

The  so-called  "  Republican  majority  "  in  the  French 
Chamber  is  probably  the  most  "  unrepresentative  "  Par- 
liamentary "majority"  in  the  world  this  side  of  Con- 
stantinople. Owing  to  the  existing  electoral  system  the 
entire  Chamber,  in  fact,  "  represents  "  only  forty-six  per 
cent,  of  the  electoral  body,  so  that  the  "  majority  "  speaks 
and  acts  in  the  name  of  only  three  million  electors  in  a 
country  where  there  are  perhaps  nearer  a  million  than 
nine  hundred  thousand  State  functionaries.  And  if  that 
majority,  deep-rooted  in  the  electoral  districts  by  means 
of  the  ingenious  mechanism  of  the  local  committees  (which 
M.  Faguet  is  no  doubt  right  in  regarding  as  the  institution 
essentielle  of  the  Third  Republic),  presumes  to  govern  the 
Government,  as  it  does  to-day;  if,  forgetting  its  sole 
raison  d'etre,  that  of  sober  legislative  action  in  co-opera- 
tion with  the  Senate,  that  "  majority "  presumes  to 
meddle,  as  it  meddles  to-day,  in  matters  that  concern 
only  the  Executive;  if,  worse  still,  that  "majority" 
unhesitatingly  dictates  to  the  Judicial  Authority,  to  such 
an  extent  that  the  Magistracy  is  no  longer  as  free  as  it  was 
under  the  pre-revolutionary  regime,  and  that  no  French 
citizen  can  feel  sure  of  justice  being  done  in  any  affair 
wherein  politics  can  possibly  play  a  part — if  this  be  the 
case,  it  is  obvious  that  the  words :  "  Government  in  France 
is  the  tyrannical  monopoly  of  a  minority,"  serve  but 
inadequately  to  paint  the  real  consequences  of  the  effort 
to  "work"  the  Constitution  of  1875  in  connexion  with 
the  Administration  of  1913.  Nor  is  it  surprising  that  in 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     143 

proportion  as  facts  of  this  nature  become  known,  French 
public  opinion  should  display  a  steady  evolution  towards 
a  more  realistic  attitude  as  regards  public  affairs.  As  a 
particularly  keen  observer  of  French  facts,  Mr.  Laurence 
Jerrold,  has  recently  put  it,  "  the  Third  Republic  is  per- 
haps at  the  beginning  of  a  great  revolution;  it  may  be 
making  up  its  mind  to  inoculate  the  idealism  of  its  politics 
with  the  realism  of  its  life."1  At  present  in  France  the 
Deputies  are  more  omnipotent  than  was  any  sovereign 
of  the  Old  Regime,2  and  may  say  of  themselves  more  truly 
than  Louis  XIV  ever  said :  "  L'etat  c'est  moi."  The  central 
power  having  set  the  example  of  the  abdication  of 
Authority,  the  prefects  and  the  sub-prefects  also  have  bent 
the  knee  before  the  local  Deputy.  There  was  a  time 
during  the  early  days  of  the  Republic  when  the  average 
citizen  was  enchanted  at  the  idea  of  humiliating  the 
agents  of  the  Central  Authority.  Those  were  the  mystical 
days  to  which  allusion  has  been  made,  the  days  of  faith  in 
the  virtues  of  Universal  Suffrage,  the  days  when  the 
dilatory  methods,  the  tyrannously  vexatious  red-tapism, 
the  insolence,  even,  of  the  Administration  had  irritated 
the  country  beyond  endurance.  When  the  Republicans 
obtained  office  France  counted  on  them  to  help  her  to 
thrust  this  unsympathetic  guardian  of  their  liberties  back 
into  her  place.  The  intervention  of  the  Deputies  was 
everywhere  sought  against  the  arbitrary  action  of  the 
agents  of  the  Central  Government.  The  Representa- 
tives of  the  People  posed  as  the  avengers  of  wrong,  the 

1  The  Real  France,  p.  38.  In  this  connexion  it  is  pertinent  to  note 
that  the  title  of  a  paradoxical  book  of  a  German  critic  of  France,  Herr 
Oskar  A.  H.  Schmitz,  is  Das  Land  der  Wirklichkeit  (Munich,  George 
Miiller,  1914). 

a  They  themselves,  however,  are  the  slaves  of  the  local  committees 
in  the  constituencies.  See  the  passage  cited  from  M.  Poincare, 
p.  110. 


144  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

defenders  of  liberty  and  justice.  Those  were  the  halcyon 
Republican  days  when  the  Deputy  was  popular  and 
respected.  But  the  "  Representatives  of  the  People  " 
contracted  a  dangerous  habit.  They  fancied  themselves, 
almost  by  virtue  of  the  Constitution,  to  be  the  indis- 
pensable intermediaries  between  the  Administration  and 
the  Public.  They  had  attacked  Administrative  oppres- 
sion. They  have  now  merely  substituted  themselves  for 
the  Administration,  and  they  have  become  in  turn  the 
oppressor. 

Authority,  Constitutional  Order,  can  therefore  be  re- 
stored in  France  solely  by  the  re-establishment  of  the 
principle  of  Separation  of  Powers. 

This  implies,  first  and  above  all,  emancipation  of  the 
Government  from  the  despotism  of  the  Chamber  of  Depu- 
ties. But  that  ideal  is  to  be  achieved  only  through  the 
creation  of  real  Parliamentary  Government  by  means  of 
the  party  system,  a  condition  itself  unattainable  without 
a  reform  of  that  Electoral  Law  which  has  produced  in 
France  a  tyrannical  boss-system.1 

The  re-establishment  of  the  principle  of  the  Separation 
of  Powers,  and  consequently  the  restoration  of  Authority, 
implies,  furthermore,  certain  forms  of  decentralization, 
at  all  events  of  deconcentration,  among  which  perhaps  the 
most  urgent  is  the  establishment  of  an  independent  Magis- 
tracy, a  Judicial  authority  unshackled  by  the  Executive 
power,  and  beyond  the  reach  of  Legislative  influence. 
As  things  now  are  in  France,  there  is  no  power  on  French 
soil  capable  of  thwarting  the  arbitrary  action  of  the 

1  "  The  Chamber  treats  the  ministers  as  if  they  were  still  the  agents 
and  the  appointees  of  a  monarch,  instead  of  its  own  representatives,  and 
is  jealous  and  suspicious  of  them  at  every  turn.  The  system  no  doubt 
waits  for  its  successful  operation  the  formation  of  two  coherent  national 
parties,  capable  of  organizing  for  government,  instead  of  merely  for 
rivalry."  Dr.  Woodrow  Wilson,  The  State,  p.  230. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     145 

Government;1  and  inasmuch  as  the  Executive  has  little 
by  little  allowed  its  normal  authority  to  be  transferred  to, 

1  There  are  signs,  however,  that  the  Conseil  d'Etat  may  gradually 
assume  a  position  rendering  it,  as  a  Constitutional  organ,  extraordin- 
arily like  the  famous  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States;  a  Court, 
that  is,  of  almost  Olympian  appeal,  judging  in  entire  independence, 
and  entrusted  even  with  the  grave  obligation  of  "interpreting"  the 
very  Constitution,  as  if  it  were  a  kind  of  executive  emanation  of  the 
sage  ruminations  of  the  National  Conscience.  It  is,  at  all  events, 
significant  that  on  various  contemporary  occasions  of  national  crisis, 
when  neither  Chamber  nor  Government,  nor  yet  even  the  President, 
dared  take  a  decision  which  would  engage  their  responsibility,  the  only 
possible  solution  to  the  crises  which  either  Cabinet  or  Chamber  could 
suggest,  was  appeal  to  the  Conseil  d'Etat.  One  need  only  recall  the 
attitude  of  that  "  High  Assembly  "  in  annulling  political  appointments 
made  by  the  Executive  contrary  to  good  administrative  regulations* 
and  in  overthrowing  the  bungling  work  of  Parliament  with  regard  to 
the  delimitations  of  the  wine-growing  regions.  The  Conseil  d'Etat,  in 
fact,  is  an  aristocratic  body,  absolutely  independent  of  the  Democracy. 
The  impartial  analysis  of  its  function  will  justify  the  conclusions  of 
the  brilliant  critic,  Francis  Delaisi,  in  his  La  Democratic  et  les 
Financiers.  (Editions  de  la  Guerre  Sociale,  pp.  115,  116.)  He  points 
out  that  its  members  possess,  in  reality,  the  legislative,  executive, 
and  judicial  authority  in  France.  "  C'est  le  haut  et  inaccessible 
donjon  ou  le  grand  capitalisme  conservateur  a  enferme  ses  supremes 
ressources." 

In  this  connexion,  it  is  pertinent  to  note  that,  while  the  system  of 
Government  by  "checks  and  balances"  almost  peculiar  to  the  Con- 
stitution of  the  United  States  appears  to  be  meeting  with  growing 
favour  in  France,  the  evolution  is  almost  universally  the  other  way 
in  other  countries.  During  the  last  few  years  in  England  there  has 
been  a  rapid  advance  in  the  realization  of  the  pure  democratic  ideal  of 
"  government  of  the  people,  by  the  people,  and  for  the  people,"  by 
recognition  of  the  legitimacy  of  the  rule  of  the  majority.  Likewise  in 
the  United  States  most  of  the  reform  proposals  made  by  the  "  Pro- 
gressives," and  notably  by  Mr.  Roosevelt,  are  inspired  by  a  faith  in 
the  divine  right  of  sheer  Number,  and  tend  to  shatter  the  devices 
invented  by  the  framers  of  the  Constitution  in  order  to  check  hasty 
legislation,  or  what  Prof.  J.  Allen  Smith  calls,  in  his  Spirit  of  American 
Government,  "  Democratic  Innovation."  Thus  Mr.  Roosevelt's  bitterly 
criticized  proposal  known  as  "the  recall  of  decisions" — in  virtue  of 
which  the  people  in  any  state  should  be  allowed  to  give  their  opinion 
by  referendum  on  the  action  of  a  Court  in  declaring  to  be  unconstitu- 

L 


146  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

and  disseminated  among,  the  members  of  the  Chamber, 
Frenchmen  are  in  reality  the  prey  of  a  Despotic 
regime. 

Thirdly,  the  re-establishment  of  the  principle  of  the 
Separation  of  Powers,  and  consequently  the  restoration  of 
Authority,  implies  the  definitive  organization  of  the  status 
of  the  three-quarters  of  a  million  of  functionaries,  in  such 
a  manner  as  to  protect  them  against  favouritism;  to 
protect,  as  well,  the  Legislative  power  against  the  tempta- 
tion to  utilize  the  functionary  system  for  base  demagogic 
ends ;  to  complete  the  isolation  of  the  Government  within 
the  sphere  of  its  normal  Executive  role;  and  (finally)  to 
render  rebellion  impossible.  One  of  the  main  elements 
of  this  reform  ought  to  be — but  never  will  be — the  abo- 
lition of  the  privilege  of  State  pensions  to  functionaries,  a 
habit  which  costs  France  one  hundred  millions  of  francs 
annually,  and  which  has  done  more  to  emasculate  French 
character,  to  destroy  French  initiative,  and  to  arrest  the 
normal  evolution  of  French  individualism,  than  any  of  the 
causes  growing  out  of  the  Napoleonic  scheme  for  the 
government  of  Frenchmen. 

The  resurrection  of  Authority,  the  restoration  of  Con- 
stitutional order,  are  thus  the  crying  needs  of  France  at 

tional  this  or  that  law  duly  passed  by  a  State  Legislature  and  signed 
by  a  Governor — is,  no  doubt,  revolutionary  from  the  point  of  view 
of  American  Hamiltonian  traditions,  but,  as  compared  with  British, 
and  most  European  methods,  it  is  an  anodyne  and  almost  conserva- 
tive proposal.  That  important  attribute  of  sovereignty,  known  as 
the  right  of  Parliaments  to  interpret  the  Constitution,  belongs,  in  the 
United  States,  to  the  Federal  judiciary,  an  unheard-of  state  of  things 
from  the  point  of  view  of  most  other  civilized  states.  Government  in 
the  United  States  may  really  be  said,  as  Mr.  S.  S.  McClure  has  put  it, 
to  be  Government  by  Courts.  (McClure's  Magazine,  May  1912.)  The 
proposal  of  Mr.  Roosevelt  may,  or  may  not,  be  prudent.  That  pro- 
posal, at  all  events,  is  one  which  does  not  justify  the  anathema  of  the 
convinced  partisans  of  Democratic  Government. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     147 

the  present  hour.  Chronic  German  aggression,1  and  the 
existence  at  home  of  a  Democracy  as  yet  not  wholly 
nationalized — "  Herveism,"  Anti-Militarism,  Revolution- 
ary Syndicalism — must  be  regarded,  no  doubt,  as  indis- 
pensable factors  in  the  maintenance  of  sane,  stable  and 
efficient  Government  in  France.2  But  something  else, 
and  something  more  legitimate,  is  needed,  and  that  some- 
thing has  been  clearly  seen  by  the  author  of  one  of  the 
remarkable  books  of  recent  years,  The  Promise  of  American 
Life.  The  author,  Mr.  Croly,  says  with  discernment: 
"  The  French  have  not  yet  come  to  realize  that  the 
success  of  their  whole  Democratic  experiment  depends 
upon  their  ability  to  reach  a  good  understanding  with 
their  fellow-countrymen,  and  that  just  in  so  far  as  their 
Democracy  fails  to  be  nationally  constructive,  it  is  ignoring 
the  most  essential  conditions  of  its  own  vitality  and  per- 
petuity." The  organization  of  Democracy  in  France 
implies  a  policy  of  constructive  nationalism.  At  the 
same  time,  France  must  learn,  in  the  words  of  Nietzsche, 
to  "  live  dangerously  " ;  and  that  ideal  is  impossible  until 
she  wakes  from  her  petit-bourgeois  dreams,  and  develops, 
for  internal  national  constructive  ends,  an  alert  and  active 
national  self -consciousness.  Frenchmen  must  learn  not  to 
be  afraid  to  assume  responsibility.  They  must  take  to 
heart  the  patriotic  and  pregnant  political  philosophy  of 
the  most  suggestive,  and  one  of  the  most  intelligent,  of 
their  contemporary  thinkers :  La  vitalite,  des  democraties  se 
mesure  a  la  force  ginitrice  d'aristocraties  qu'elles  portent  en 
elles.3 

1  Prince  Bismarck  once  said  of  the  French:  "Leave  them  alone- 
If  you  leave  them  alone,  they  will  devour  each  other.     If  you  attack 
them  from  abroad,  they  will  gather  together  to  face  the  foreigner." 
See  Paris  correspondence  of  The  Times,  December  20,  1898. 

2  Cf.  note,  p.  132. 

3  .  .  .  et  rHorreur  des  Responsabilites.     By  Emile  Faguet,  p.  200. 


148  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

But  no  friend  of  France  need  feel  discouraged  as  to  the 
capacity  of  Frenchmen  eventually  to  learn  these  truths, 
or  as  to  their  ability  to  put  their  house  in  order.  It  is 
noticeable,  as  one  of  the  most  hopeful  of  the  signs  of  the 
undiminished  vitality  of  France,  that,  in  proportion  as, 
under  the  action  of  the  wind  and  rain,  the  three  mystical 
words,  Liberte,  Egalite,  Fraternite,  fade  from  the  fa9ades 
of  her  public  buildings,  no  one  thinks  of  restoring  them 
to  their  pristine  glitter;  and  that,  though  there  are  still 
Frenchmen  who  believe  in  Fraternity,  and  others  who 
long  for  Liberty,  none,  from  Normandy  to  Aquitaine,  and 
from  the  two  Burgundies  to  Poitou,  but  knows  that 
Equality  is  an  absurd  and  a  dangerous  lie. 


Before  submitting  the  question  of  the  British  internal 
crisis  to  the  careful  scrutiny  that  has  been  applied  to  the 
problem  of  unrest  in  France,  it  seems  useful,  at  this  stage, 
first  briefly  to  summarize — in  connexion  with  a  rapid 
survey  of  the  question  of  the  Balkans — the  foregoing 
detailed  narrative  of  the  political  development  of  Europe 
as  determined  by  the  peculiar  method  chosen  by  Prussian 
statesmen  for  the  formation  of  a  united  Germany;  and 
secondly,  to  analyse  the  relations  existing  between  the 
members  of  the  Triple  Entente  during  the  three  or  four 
years  that  preceded  the  revival  by  Germany  in  July  191 1 
of  an  aggressively  imperialist  policy. 

If  Germany  once  again  ventured,  at  that  date,  to  risk 
disturbing  the  peace  of  Europe  by  the  dispatch  of  a  gun- 
boat to  Agadir,  it  was  largely  because  the  absorption  of 
each  of  the  partners  of  the  Triple  Entente  in  its  own 
domestic  concerns  had  distracted  the  attention  of  those 
Powers  from  matters  affecting  their  common  interests, 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     149 

and  had  suggested  to  Germany  that  the  time  was  favour- 
able for  furthering  her  own  interests  at  the  expense  of 
her  rivals.  Germany  had,  meanwhile,  taken  all  the  neces- 
sarj-  precautions  to  prevent  her  projects  in  Africa  and  in 
Western  Europe  from  being  disturbed  by  any  untoward 
event  elsewhere.  She  had  frankly  decided  to  help  the 
Sultan  to  keep  the  peace  in  an  intangible  Ottoman 
Empire.  The  "  Eastern  Question  "  remained  in  abey- 
ance. Europe,  still  shirking  its  responsibilities,  continued 
to  find  it  convenient  hypocritically  to  confide  the  question 
of  Macedonian  Reform  to  the  two  Powers  "  more  par- 
ticularly interested  "  (Agreement  of  Muertzsteg,  1903). 
How  could  France  and  England  keep  a  vigilant  eye  on 
Yildiz  Kiosque  and  the  Balkans  while  Germany  absorbed 
every  moment  of  their  attention  which  was  not  given  to 
their  own  domestic  difficulties  ?  The  Macedonian  sore 
was  accordingly  allowed  to  fester,  for  at  all  costs  the 
"  integrity  of  the  Ottoman  Empire  "  had  to  be  main- 
tained. The  Balkan  States  were  told  to  watch  and  pray, 
but  to  keep  the  peace.  They  obeyed;  but  meanwhile 
they  borrowed  money  in  Paris  and  London  and  Berlin; 
they  bought  Creusot  guns;  they  kept  the  peace,  but  kept, 
at  the  same  time,  their  powder  dry.  The  time  was  at 
hand  when  they  were  to  flout  the  cynical  and  craven 
nations  to  which  they  owed  their  very  existence.  But 
for  the  moment  the  leading  signatories  of  the  Treaty  of 
Berlin  were  free  to  ignore  the  Eastern  Question,  and 
Germany  could  continue  to  carry  out  the  Bismarckian 
dream:  "Russia  in  the  Far-East,  Austria  in  the  East, 
France  n'importe  ott."1 

The  motives  of  the  Wilhelmstrasse  after  1904  may  be 
divined.     German  policy  in  regard  to  Morocco  was  a  pro- 

1  Speech  on  Foreign  Policy,  by  M.  Paul  Deschanel,  November  19, 
1903,  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies. 


150  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

longed  bluff,  but  it  was  not  that  alone.  It  was  above  all, 
no  doubt,  a  rationally  conceived  experiment  to  test  the 
solidity  of  the  Anglo-French  Entente;  but  it  was  also  a 
feint,  enabling  Germany  to  make  a  series  of  embarrassing 
surprise  attacks  at  another  point  of  the  diplomatic  ring. 
The  Moroccan  Question  tended  to  absorb  the  entire  atten- 
tion of  France  and  even  of  England,  and  to  leave  Germany 
free  to  pursue,  more  or  less  secretly,  her  policy  of  pacific 
penetration  in  the  Middle  East,  from  Macedonia  to  Con- 
stantinople and  from  Smyrna  to  the  Persian  Gulf.  Viewed 
in  this  light,  German  policy  becomes  a  rational  effort  to 
further  German  Imperial  ends. 

In  order  to  keep  an  open  market  in  the  Middle  East  for 
her  expanding  trade,  Germany  acquiesced  in  the  tyran- 
nical and  arbitrary  methods  of  Abdul  Hamid.  She  com- 
bated British  and  French  influence  by  exciting  that 
monarch's  dread  of  "liberal  ideas."  The  "Young 
Turks  "  were,  to  a  large  degree,  the  product  of  French 
"  philosophy  "  from  Condorcet  to  Comte,  or  of  French 
culture  disseminated  in  the  numerous  schools  founded  by 
French  monks.  Modern  ideas  in  the  Ottoman  Empire 
were,  at  all  events,  expressed  in  French,  and  Marshal  von 
der  Goltz  often  complained  of  this.  Nowhere  were  the 
mystic  watchwords  of  the  French  Revolution,  "  Liberty," 
"  Equality,"  "  Fraternity,"  taken  more  touchingly  to  the 
letter  than  among  the  young  Ottoman  reformists.  Exiled 
in  Paris,  London  or  Geneva,  they  propagated,  from  those 
safe  vantage-points,  in  their  caustic  little  newspapers  and 
pamphlets,  the  principles  of  Western  civilization.1  The 

1  During  more  than  ten  years  the  present  writer  remained  in  con- 
tact, in  Paris,  with  many  of  the  conspirators  who  were  destined  to 
play  a  leading  part  in  the  Revolution  of  1908.  The  genuineness  of 
the  idealism  of  the  great  majority  recalled  the  doctrinaire  rigour  of  a 
Calvin,  ready  to  sacrifice  Servetus  on  an  altar  raised  to  the  Moloch 
of  Exegesis,  or  of  a  Robespierre  sending  to  the  knife  political  enemies 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     151 

Sultan  was  master  on  the  Golden  Horn,  but  in  Macedonia, 
where  the  "  honour  "  of  the  Christian  Powers  occasionally 
required  Europe  to  intervene  with  a  programme  of 
reforms,  Abdul  Hamid  found  it  less  easy  to  "  make  a 
solitude  and  call  it  peace." 

It  was  at  Salonica  and  Monastir,  on  Ottoman  soil,  in 
contact  with  the  Greek,  the  Bulgarian,  and  the  Servian, 
that  the  Young  Turks  first  managed  to  co-ordinate  their 
efforts,  and  to  form  the  famous  secret  committee  known 
as  "  the  Committee  of  Union  and  Progress."  Ottoman 
pride,  even  Turkish  patriotism,  was  humiliated  by  the 
arrival  in  1904  of  the  foreign  officers  imposed  on  Turkey 
by  Europe  to  reorganize  the  Macedonian  gendarmerie. 
The  number  of  these  officers  was  doubled  in  1905,  and  in 
1906  Europe  obliged  the  Sultan  to  accept  financial  control 
in  Macedonia  and  a  further  increase  of  the  gendarmerie. 
As  one  of  the  foreign  officers  has  testified,1  the  Mace- 
donian Turks  and  the  "  Young  Turk  "  officers  held  the 
Sultan  responsible  for  the  humiliation  which  they  felt  as 
Ottomans,  but,  far  from  bearing  any  grudge  against  the 
European  officers,  they  did  their  best  to  help  these  officers 
in  their  task.  At  all  events  Macedonia  became  the  only 
part  of  the  Ottoman  Empire  where  the  Turks  developed 
sufficient  national  self-respect  to  perceive  that  reform 
alone  could  save  their  country;  but  they  could  not 
tolerate  the  thought  that  Islamism  was  to  owe  its  salva- 
tion to  the  foreigner. 

In  intimate  contact  with  European  ideas,  the  Turkish 

condemned  in  the  name  of  Liberty.  He  had  no  illusions  as  to  the 
folly  of  the  Foreign  Offices  of  Europe  in  welcoming  so  effusively  these 
sinister  logicians,  and  on  more  than  one  occasion,  in  published  utter- 
ances, expressed  the  opinion  that  they  would  wreck  their  country. 
He  gave  them  three  years  in  which  to  prove  their  incompetence.  The 
prophecy  was  fulfilled  in  four. 

1  Major  Sarrou,  in  La  Jeune  Turquie  et  la  Revolution,  p.  11. 


152  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

civilian  officials  and  officers  in  Macedonia  resolved  to 
dethrone   the   sovereign   who   was  selling  the  Ottoman 
birthright   to   the   Infidel   Powers.      The   revolutionary 
"  Committee  of  Union  and  Progress  "  was  thus  formed 
and  developed,  not  merely  against  the  Hamidian  regime 
but  against  a  meddlesome  Europe.     Turkey,  it  was  held, 
must  have  a  Constitution,  providing  guarantees  of  liberty 
and  establishing  her  as  an  independent  Power.     Good 
government  must  begin  in  Macedonia.     Only  thus  could 
the  foreigner  be  evicted.     When,  in  July  1908,  the  con- 
stitution of  Midhat  Pasha  was  revived,  the  "  hero  of  the 
Revolution,"  Enver  Bey,  exclaimed,  before  ten  thousand 
people  assembled  in  Liberty  Square  at  Salonica:  "  To-day 
Arbitrary    Government    has   disappeared.    We   are   all 
brothers.     There   are  no  longer  in  Turkey   Bulgarians, 
Greeks,  Servians,  Rumanians,  Mussulmans,  Jews.     Under 
the  same  blue  sky  we  are  all  proud  to  be  Ottomans." 
The  European  Consuls  at  Salonica  were  duped  by  this 
eloquence  and   their  enthusiasm  duped  their   Govern- 
ments.    On  July  30  the  Journal  de  Salonique  referred  as 
follows  to  the  scheme  of  a  Balkan  Confederation:   "I 
have  every  confidence  that  the  Turkish  army  .  .  .  will 
bring  about  fraternity  among  the  Balkan  Peoples.    Thus 
will  finally  be  realized,  for  the  happiness  of  all  the  nations 
of  the  Peninsula,  that  Oriental  Confederation  which  has 
so  long  been  the  object  of  our  hopes  and  dreams."  Never, 
indeed,  had  there  been  such  an  opportunity.     The  Bul- 
garian, Servian,  Rumanian  and  Greek  Press  applauded. 
It  is  probable  that  if,  just  at  this  moment,  the  Foreign 
Ministers  of  the  Great  Powers  had  not  publicly  acclaimed, 
in  their  several  Parliaments,  the  work  of  the  Committee, 
the  Young  Turks  might  have  been  checked  on  the  head- 
long path  of  presumptuous  nationalism  which,  four  years 
later,  was  to  precipitate  them,  together  with  the  Empire 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     153 

for  which  they  had  become  responsible,  into  one  of  the 
greatest  disasters  of  history.     Yet,  for  the  time  being, 
the  Balkan  States  were  ready  to  unite  with  the  Young 
Turks  in  common  hatred  of  the  Tyrant.     Unfortunately, 
the  Young  Turks  were  vain-glorious  and  inexperienced. 
Although    fed    on    the    crude    pastry    of    revolutionary 
formulas,  the  leaders  repudiated,  at  their  very  first  suc- 
cess, the  idealism  which  had  conciliated  the  sympathy 
of  the   Balkan   nationalities.     On   Monday,  October   5, 
1908,  Austria-Hungary,   backed  by  Germany,  annexed 
Bosnia-Herzegovina,  and  Bulgaria,  proclaiming  its  inde- 
pendence,  annexed  Eastern  Rumelia.     The  Committee 
might  have  seized  this  opportunity  to  place  itself  at  the 
head  of  a  Balkan  League.1    It  preferred,  instead,  to  take 
a  futile  revenge  by  boycotting  Austrian  and  Bulgarian 
trade.     A  Young  Turk  Mission,  sent  to  Western  Europe, 
to  arouse  the  sympathy  and  to  secure  the  diplomatic 
and  financial  support  of  France  and  England,  returned 
to  Salonica  crest-fallen,  and  convinced  that  Europe  was 
jealous  of  the  Committee's  success.     In  their  exaspera- 
tion, the  Revolution  leaders  decided  to  adopt  a  policy  of 
militarism,    while   the   Committee   simultaneously   pre- 
pared a  scheme  for  submerging  the  Christian  peoples  of 
Macedonia  under  a  flood  of  Mussulman  immigrants. 
The    chiefs    of    the    Bulgarian,    Greek,    Servian    and 

1  Dr.  Kleanthes  Nicolaides,  who  played  an  interesting  part  in  the 
negotiations  resulting  in  the  conclusion  of  the  Balkan  League,  con- 
tributed in  November  1912  three  valuable  articles  to  the  Echo  de 
Paris  on  "  La  Genese  de  1'Union  Balkanique."  He  showed  notably 
that,  throughout  the  preliminary  discussions  for  the  establishment  of 
their  Union,  the  Balkan  States  always  expressed  the  wish  that  Turkey 
should  form  part  of  it.  "  It  remained  possible  for  Turkey  to  enter  the 
League,  in  fact,  up  to  the  beginning  of  August  1912.  If  Turkey  had 
seized  the  opportunity  thus  offered  her,  she  might  be  to-day  at  the 
head  of  the  Union.  .  .  .  She  owes  the  present  disaster  solely  to  the 
lack  of  judgment  and  good-will  of  her  rulers." 


154  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Albanian  Committees  and  Bands  had  hitherto  honestly 
believed  in  the  protestations  as  to  Ottoman  fraternity. 
Even  in  March  1909,  at  the  moment  of  the  reactionary 
coup  d'etat  at  Constantinople,  the  Macedonian  Christians 
remained  loyal  to  the  Revolution.  Race  quarrels,  do- 
mestic rivalries,  disappeared,  says  Mr.  Sam  Levy1  (per- 
haps the  most  competent  authority  on  the  spot),  in 
presence  of  the  danger  incurred  by  the  new  regime.  Even 
the  Governments  of  the  Balkan  States  still  manifested 
their  readiness  to  co-operate  in  the  work  of  Macedonian 
reform.  Thus  seconded,  the  Committee  of  Union  and 
Progress  recovered  its  power,  and  deposed  the  Sultan. 
But  its  point  of  view  had  now  completely  changed.  It 
had  become  the  counterpart  of  the  sinister  Committee  of 
Public  Safety  of  the  French  Revolution.  Forgetting 
its  promises  of  Liberty,  Equality,  Fraternity  and  Justice, 
it  pursued  now  a  purely  Islamic  policy.  Its  aim  hence- 
forth was  to  crush  out  all  the  Christian  Nationalities  in 
the  Empire,  and  notably  in  Macedonia.  Yet,  long- 
suffering  still,  the  Balkan  States  remained  almost  quix- 
otically friendly.  Official  declarations  in  Sofia  and 
Belgrade  left  no  doubt  as  to  the  sincerity  of  the  desire 
of  these  two  Balkan  Powers  to  settle  the  problems  of 
Macedonia  in  co-operation  with  the  New  Turkey,  and 
without  a  war.  The  Tsar  Ferdinand  went  to  Constanti- 
nople on  an  official  visit,  and  Pierre  Karageorgewitch 
was  welcomed  officially  at  Salonica.  What  was  the  result 
of  these  advances  to  Turkey  ?  Turkish  psychology  is 
not  as  that  of  the  Western  nations.  The  attitude  of  the 
Christian  peoples  of  the  Balkans  was  interpreted  as  an 
indication  of  their  inferiority.  Bulgaria  and  Servia  were 
believed  to  be  afraid  of  the  neo-Ottoman  Power.  The 

1  Les  Mefaits  du  Comite  Union  et  Progr&s ;  Sam  L4vy:  Mecherou- 
tiette,  October  1912. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     155 

Committee  of  Union  and  Progress  accordingly  pro- 
ceeded to  persecute  the  Bulgarian  clubs  in  Macedonia, 
and  to  promulgate  the  Associations  Law  (August  1909)1 
interdicting  all  nationalist  or  religious  meetings.  By 
1910,  in  fact,  Macedonia  had  once  again  become  a  pande- 
monium of  fratricidal  passions.  Anarchy  was  more 
rampant  there  than  under  the  reign  of  Abdul  Hamid. 
On  January  23,  1910,  the  Salonica  newspaper  already 
quoted,  printed  in  large  type  the  following  note : — 

"  We  learn  that  serious  pourparlers  are  now  going  on  between  the 
most  influential  members  of  the  Greek  and  Bulgarian  communities 
to  arrive  at  a  rapprochement.  It  would  even  appear  that  an  under- 
standing is  already  under  way." 

The  Crown  Prince  of  Servia  arrived  at  Sofia  on  the 
same  day.  The  Balkan  League  was  in  being.  Young  Turk 
presumption  and  incapacity  had  worked  this  miracle. 
The  Committee  of  Union  and  Progress  had  opened,  be- 
tween the  Balkan  Nationalities  and  the  Turkish  Empire, 
the  gulf,  deeper  than  the  Sea  of  Marmara,  into  which 
they  were  to  be  hurled  headlong  only  two  years  later.2 

1  Clause  four  of  this  law  was  as  follows :  "  The  establishment  of 
Political  Associations  on  the  basis,  or  under  the  denomination  of 
nationality,  is  prohibited."  This  was  a  fatal  blunder.  It  entailed 
the  immediate  dissolution  of  the  various  nationalist  clubs  in  Mace- 
donia, which  were,  nevertheless,  loyally  devoted  to  the  Young  Turk 
Movement  and  to  the  Constitution.  The  immediate  consequence  was 
a  revival  of  the  old-time  suspicion  of  the  Turk  throughout  Macedonia, 
and  a  rapidly  growing  distrust  of  the  "  Committee  of  Union  and 
Progress." 

3  The  first  official  step  with  a  view  to  common  action  for  the  defence 
of  the  privileges  of  the  Christians  in  Macedonian  Turkey  was  taken  by 
the  Greek  Prime  Minister,  M.  Venezelos,  who,  in  April  1911,  proposed 
to  Bulgaria  to  conclude  a  defensive  alliance  to  meet  the  contingency 
of  a  Turkish  attack  on  either  of  the  two  States.  (Cf.  the  article  in 
The  Times,  June  5, 1913,  by  the  correspondent  in  the  Balkan  Peninsula: 
"History  of  the  First  Overtures.")  These  Greek  proposals  preceded 
the  first  Serbo-Bulgarian  conversations  by  at  least  five  months.  Cf. 
note  1,  p.  327. 


156  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

The  connexion  of  the  episode  of  the  Turkish  Revolu- 
tion and  of  the  Balkan  war  with  the  immediate  theme  is 
sufficiently  obvious.  The  Berlin  Treaty  was  a  bungling 
artifice  for  stifling  the  cries  of  the  youthful  Balkan 
nations  created  by  the  Treaty  of  San  Stefano.  San 
Stefano  had  given  the  Balkan  peoples  the  hope  that  they 
were  about  to  enjoy  a  national  existence.  Three  cynical 
surgeons,  Bismarck,  Beaconsfield  and  Andrassy,  sud- 
denly seized  the  infant  Powers,  gagged  them,  and — with- 
out even  bandaging  their  wounds — handed  them  over 
to  the  Turkish  task- master.  During  nearly  thirty  years 
the  Turk  was  suffered  to  brutalize  his  wards,  with  only 
occasional  inspection  or  reproach  on  the  part  of  the 
"  interested  "  and  "  disinterested  "  Powers.  Finally,  in 
1908,  came  the  Revolution.  After  1908  for  a  wonderful 
period  of  eighteen  months  the  Turkish  task-master  seemed 
to  have  been  transformed  into  a  comrade.  In  this  new 
role,  however,  the  Turk  made  but  a  fleeting  appearance. 
He  vanished  into  the  wings  and  came  forth  in  the  garb  of 
an  executioner.  But,  in  spite  of  the  implication  of  the 
Treaty  of  Frankfort  and  of  the  Treaty  of  Berlin,  the  sub- 
stance of  human  nature  is  not  quite  of  the  same  malleable 
and  senseless  stuff  as  that  of  the  elements  composing  a 
chemical  compound.  The  vile  Slav  worm  had  become  a 
chrysalis  and  was  destined  to  break  the  cocoon  so  in- 
geniously and  artificially  elaborated  at  the  Berlin  Con- 
gress. If  the  Treaty  of  San  Stefano  had  been  suffered  to 
remain  the  law  of  Europe,  the  world  would  have  been 
spared  the  horrors  of  October  and  November  1912;  but, 
at  the  same  time,  it  would  have  been  deprived  of  a 
singularly  interesting  object-lesson.  It  would  not  have 
had  this  fresh  illustration  of  the  short-sightedness  of  the 
Founder  of  the  German  Empire.  Indeed,  what  were  to 
become,  after  Bismarck's  death,  the  vital  Imperial  in- 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     157 

terests  of  the  New  Germany,  have  all  along  been  ham- 
pered in  their  evolution  by  the  very  influences  that  Ger- 
many herself  set  in  motion  when  she  forced  upon  the 
world  the  two  arbitrary  solutions  of  the  Treaties  of  1870 
and  1878.1 

The  relations  between  the  members  of  the  Triple 
Entente  during  the  period  just  analysed,  from  1904  to  the 
formation  of  the  Balkan  League  and  to  the  famous  coup 
(TAgadir,  seem,  however,  to  mark  a  partial  and  temporary 
success  of  German  policy.  Nothing  is  more  curious  than 
the  way  the  harmonious  working  of  the  Triple  Entente 
was  for  a  long  time  endangered  by  the  friction  which  the 
domestic  problems  of  its  several  members  generated. 
What  M.  Andre  Tardieu  accurately  described  in  1910  and 
1911  as  "  Anglo-Franco-Russian  ataxy"  found  therein 
one  of  its  main  causes.  Of  the  three  partners  to  this  pact, 
France,  in  spite  of  the  crises  of  rebellion  among  her  civil 
servants,  has  perhaps  of  late  suffered  the  least  embarrass- 
ment. More  than  either  England  or  Russia  she  has  been 
at  liberty  to  seek  to  adjust  her  own  private  interests 
to  the  vital  common  interests  of  the  Triple  Entente.  Her 
friends  were  for  some  years  less  free  than  she  to  play 
their  part  according  to  the  rules  of  the  game.  After  the 

1  It  is  not  only  in  matters  of  Foreign  Policy  that  Germany  has  had 
to  pay  dear  for  the  blunders  of  the  deified  Bismarck.  M.  W.  Martin 
says  excellently  in  La  Crise  Politique  de  rAllemagne  Contemporaine, 
p.  8:  "  L'on  peut  faire  remonter  a  Bismarck  tous  les  embarras  de 
1'Allemagne  actuelle.  II  a  forge  de  ses  mains  presque  toutes  les  diffi- 
cultes  dont  la  solution  reste  a  trouver.  Sa  politique  anti-socialiste, 
anti-catholique,  anti-polonaise,  pese  encore  BUT  la  vie  du  pays.  On 
dit,  pour  la  louer,  que  ce  fut  une  politique  realiste.  II  semble  que 
son  realisme  a  consiste  surtout  a  sacrifier  1'avenir  au  present,  et  1'avenir, 
devenu  le  present,  se  venge."  Cf.  pp.  44  and  273.  To  prove  the 
"short-sightedness"  of  the  Bismarckian  vision  was  in  no  wise  the 
willing  intent  of  the  author  of  Problems  of  Power.  The  paradoxical 
ephemeralness  of  Bismarck's  action  is,  however,  one  of  the  lessons  of 
the  facts  set  forth  in  the  present  volume.  Cf.  p.  83,  note  2. 


158  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

death  of  King  Edward  the  very  foundations  of  British 
Society  and  of  England's  Imperial  greatness  were 
jeopardized,  and  they  remained  in  peril,  as  will  be  seen,1 
until  the  defeat  of  Canadian  reciprocity  with  the  United 
States.  England's  absorption  in  her  own  grave  private 
matters  resulted  in  the  dangerous  indifference  and  ir- 
resolution (as  if  she  had  eaten  curare  and  all  her  motor 
nerves  were  paralysed)  which,  for  many  months  prior  to 
Agadir,  caused  her  to  withhold  from  France  all  but  the 
most  spasmodic  assistance.  And  what  the  Temps  said 
of  the  Entente  Cordiale,  that  its  members  had  "  pratique1 
parallelement,  dans  la  solidarite  des  sentiments,  et 
1'incoherence  des  actes,  la  politique  du  laisser  faire," 
might,  with  even  greater  force,  have  been  applied  to  the 
relations  between  France  and  Russia,  until  M.  Poincare, 
at  the  head  of  a  really  "  national  "  ministry,  decided  to 
substitute  for  the  policy  of  laisser  aller  a  policy  of  strenu- 
ous and  concerted  action.2  Ever  since  the  Russo-Japanese 
War,  Russia  had,  in  fact,  been  trying  to  run  with  the  hare 
and  hunt  with  the  hounds.  The  new  Russia,  the  Russia 

1  See  p.  201  et  seq. 

*  The  first  executive  act  of  M.  Poincare,  as  President  of  the  Re- 
public, was  the  appointment  (February  20, 1913)  of  M.  Delcasse  as  Am- 
bassador at  St.  Petersburg.  No  diplomatic  service  in  the  world  could 
then  boast  of  such  unity  of  views  as  was  thus  ensured  hi  the  Quai 
d'Orsay  by  the  simultaneous  presence  of  the  two  Cambons  in  London 
and  Berlin  respectively,  of  M.  Barrere  hi  Rome,  and  of  M.  Delcasse 
in  St.  Petersburg.  Let  the  reader  meditate  on  this  remark  in  the 
light  of  p.  59  et  aeq.  At  St.  Petersburg,  during  the  critical  moment  of 
the  Inter- Balkan  War,  M.  Delcasse  was  the  prime  mover  in  the  policy 
that  aimed  at  the  re-establishment  of  equilibrium  hi  the  Balkans 
and  of  peace  hi  Europe  by  convincing  Rumania  of  the  necessity  of 
following  an  independent  and  neutral  policy,  free  from  all  entangle- 
ments with  the  Triple  Alliance.  When  he  had  achieved  this  great 
object,  he  considered  his  mission  accomplished,  and  he  returned  to 
Paris.  His  successor,  M.  Paleologue,  pro-Balkan  by  atavism  and  by 
education,  may  legitimately  be  named  hi  the  same  breath  with  the 
Ambassadors  just  mentioned. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     159 

of  the  Duma,  under  the  guidance  of  M.  Stolypin,  under- 
took to  reconcile  the  dangerous  ideas  that  have  invaded 
it  from  the  West  and  its  own  native  traditions ;  to  create 
a  Parliament  on  Russian  soil  without  infringing  the 
prerogatives  of  the  Autocrat  of  All-the-Russias ;  but, 
above  all,  as  M.  Victor  Berard  has  put  it,  to  honour  its 
signature  as  partner  in  the  Triple  Entente  without  break- 
ing with  its  old  friends  and  allies,  the  Hohenzollerns  and 
the  Hapsburgs.  In  this  duel  between  Constitutionalism 
and  Nationalism,  the  wonder  was  that  the  Triple  Entente 
should  have  survived  even  up  to  Potsdam. 

Frenchmen  cherished  for  ten  years  and  more  the  illusion 
that  the  alliance  with  Russia  was  an  earnest  of  the  ulti- 
mate recovery  of  Alsace-Lorraine.  As  has  been  seen,  it 
took  that  length  of  time  for  them  to  comprehend  that  the 
armies  of  the  Dual  Alliance  were  the  armies  of  the  Hague ; 
that  neither  the  Tsar  nor  their  own  rulers  had  contem- 
plated by  the  Alliance  any  other  aim  than  that  of  defence ; 
that  the  sole  positive  good  which  the  Alliance  was  in- 
tended to  secure  was  the  maintenance  of  European  equi- 
librium, and  that  they  who  had  looked  to  it  as  a  potential 
instrument  of  speedy  revanche,  had  been  tragically  duped. 

When  France  realized  that  the  Russian  Alliance  meant 
that  things  must  be  as  they  had  been,  the  plight  of  the 
nation  was  one  that  might  have  given  rise  to  a  certain 
sullen  resentment.  Such  resentment  did,  in  fact,  exist 
to  a  certain  degree  among  the  generations  that  remem- 
bered the  war  of  1870.  Upon  the  younger  generation, 
on  the  contrary,  the  consequence  of  their  slow  perception 
of  the  real  significance,  in  its  European  bearings,  of  the 
pact  with  Russia  was  strangely  different.  Little  by  little 
the  notion  of  revanche  faded  from  the  foreground  of  the 
French  consciousness  and  gave  way  to  a  kind  of  supine 


160  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

satisfaction  with  the  idea  of  security  implied  in  the  exist- 
ence of  the  Alliance.  If  the  Alliance  was  to  be  no  longer 
interpreted  as  a  means  of  realizing  French  dreams,  it 
meant,  at  all  events,  the  inexpressible  boon  of  peace. 
The  French  soul  tended  to  become  relaxed.  Humani- 
tarianism,  "  pacificism,"  anti  -  militarism,  began  to 
flourish.  France  had  been  cocardier  up  to  1890.  It  was 
the  aftermath  of  the  influence  of  Gambetta,  who  died 
on  January  4,  1883.  The  Russian  Alliance  gradually 
calmed  her  nerves,  dissipated  her  fears,  lulled  her  to 
sleep.  A  Dreyfus  Case  became  possible.  Strong  in 
their  faith  in  the  loyalty  of  Russia  to  keep  strict  watch 
over  the  German  dogs  of  war,  in  case  they  seemed  to  be 
preparing  to  leap  across  her  eastern  frontier,  the  Repub- 
licans fancied  themselves  at  liberty  to  indulge  in  idealistic 
experiment,  and  free  to  respond,  for  instance,  without  loss 
of  dignity,  or  dread  of  the  consequences,  to  the  cajoleries 
and  flatteries  of  the  German  Kaiser.  If  he  had  con- 
tinued to  cajole  instead  of  beginning  to  menace,  humani- 
tarianism  might  have  gangrened  the  whole  of  France. 

One  public  man  of  eminence  in  France,  and  one  public 
man  alone,  President  Grevy,  had  a  foreign  policy  which 
might  have  saved  his  country  from  some  of  the  psycho- 
logical consequences,  and  from  the  positive  sequence,  of 
the  events  that  ensued.  President  Grevy  never  tired  of 
preaching  the  gospel  of  isolation,  the  danger  of  entangling 
alliances,  of  supine  acceptance  of  the  statu  quo.1  But  he 

1  The  reader  will  find  in  M.  Henri  Galli's  admirable  Gambetta  et 
I' Alsace-Lorraine  a  sober  indictment  of  the  role  of  President  Grevy  in 
thwarting,  from  terre-d-terre  pusillanimity,  the  patriotic  campaign  of 
Gambetta.  M.  Galli's  book  is  the  work  of  a  critical  historian.  The 
documents  it  contains  should  be  scrutinized  in  connexion  with  the 
recent  writings  of  Mme.  Adam  and  the  Neo-Royalists  of  the  Action 
Francaise,  who  seek  in  vain  to  prove  that  the  "  Republic  of  Gambetta 
was  the  Republic  of  Bismarck,"  and  that  Gambetta  merely  "played 
the  comedy  of  la  Revanche." 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     161 

was  over-ruled,  and  successive  Ministers  in  France  who 
extolled  the  Russian  Alliance  hoped  not  merely  to  assure 
European  equilibrium,  but  to  maintain  European  peace 
by  holding  Germany  in  check.  They  were  also  aiming  in- 
directly at  the  great  century-old  rival  of  their  country, 
Great  Britain.  Notwithstanding  Bismarck's  efforts  to 
thwart  the  inception  of  the  Franco-Russian  Alliance,  the 
heirs  of  his  policy  found  in  the  Franco»-Russian  Alliance 
one  of  their  most  magnificent  opportunities.  What  the 
Germans  rapidly  perceived  was  that  in  the  Dual  Alliance, 
by  the  nature  of  things,  German  hegemony  was  in  being. 
By  that  Alliance  a  possible  bellicose  France  was  para- 
lysed. With  a  splendid  and  almost  diabolic  ingenuity 
Germany  evolved  a  scheme  for  utilizing  the  Alliance  in 
her  own  interest.  She  did  all  in  her  power  to  fan  the 
embers  of  Anglo  -  French  discord  by  favouring  French 
colonial  expansion.  She  was  aware  that  the  first  result 
would  be  to  pit  France  against  England  under  every 
clime  and  on  every  sea ;  the  second  that  young  ambitious 
Italy  would  become  the  deadly  foe  of  France;  and  the 
third,  that  she  herself  would  ultimately  be  able  to  dictate 
to  a  divided  Europe  the  direction  of  European  policy. 
For  long  years  German  foresight  was  confirmed  to  the 
letter.  The  daring  plan  for  keeping  down  French  re- 
siliency was  for  a  time  completely  successful.  France 
and  England  came  into  dangerous  collision  everywhere. 

"  Where  did  you  refrain  from  us,  or  toe  refrain  from  you  ? 
Ask  the  wave  that  has  not  watched  war  between  us  two"1 

Italy  and  France  glared  at  each  other  in  Tunis  and  over 
the  Dauphine  passes,  while  the  Triple  Alliance  was  being 
slowly  consolidated.  Successive  German  Chancellors 
rubbed  their  hands  in  glee,  and  German  hegemony 

1  Rudyard  Kipling  :  "  France."  The  Morning  Post,  June  24, 
1913. 

If 


162  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

assumed  the  aspect  of  a  pillar  of  cloud  by  day  and  almost 
of  fire  by  night. 

But  the  German  plan  succeeded  too  admirably.  The 
Greeks,  who  were  practical  psychologists,  noted  that  a 
Nemesis  dogs  the  steps  of  a  man  or  nation  addicted  to 
the  unpardonable  sin  of  pride.  There  came  a  time,  amid 
the  multiple  shocks  which  harassed  the  nerves  of  British 
and  French  Foreign  Ministers,  as  the  lines  of  British 
and  French  Colonial  expansion  dovetailed  throughout  the 
world,  when  the  chances  of  peace  or  war  between  France 
and  England  seemed  to  hang  by  a  thread.  Both  Powers, 
after  Fashoda,  awoke  to  the  idea  that  they  had  been 
playing  the  German  game;  that  while  they  had  been 
irritating  one  another  by  constant  pin-pricks,  Germany 
had  been  looming  more  and  more  menacingly  on  the 
horizon.  The  scales  seemed  to  drop  simultaneously 
from  their  eyes.  They  saw — with  the  clearness  presented 
by  one  of  those  superb  comic  situations  staged  by  Fate- 
that  either  they  must  go  to  war  for  the  benefit  of  Ger- 
many or  must  come  to  an  understanding  with  her,  in 
their  common  interest,  to  the  discomfiture  of  a  common 
rival.  Fashoda  was  the  fork  on  their  Damascus  road. 
The  revelation  they  received  there  flung  into  dazzling 
light  the  whole  maliciousness  of  the  German  scheme,  of 
which  they  had  been  for  years  the  dupes.  Such  was  the 
beautifully  logical  birth  of  that  Entente  Cordiale  which 
shattered  as  by  a  thunderbolt  a  German  policy  that  had 
lasted,  and  succeeded,  for  nearly  twenty  years. 

For  some  months  Germany  lay  stunned  and  prone. 
The  incredible  had  happened.  There  had  been  long  years 
in  the  nineties  when  the  Wilhelmstrasse  must  have  known 
as  well  as  the  Quai  d'Orsay,  or  any  Parisian,  that  England 
was  even  more  hated  in  France  than  the  Power  which  had 
dismembered  that  country  in  the  Galerie  des  Glaces  at 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     163 

Versailles.  The  possibility  that  England  and  France 
could  ever  come  to  terms  was  not  taken  in  Germany  as 
even  a  remote  contingency.  It  was  regarded  as  a  political 
absurdity.  Yet  the  incredible  thing  had  happened. 
And,  irony  of  ironies,  it  had  occurred  simply  as  a  conse- 
quence of  the  overweening  success  of  the  Bismarckian  plan. 
After  the  first  discountenancing  blow  it  was  not  sur- 
prising that  the  German  Chancery  was  a  long  time  pulling 
itself  together.  Germany's  uncouth  movements  and  ges- 
tures in  seeking  to  wreck  the  new  combination  of  the 
Entente  Cordiale;  her  futile  efforts  in  Spain,  before  the 
accession  of  the  young  Sovereign,  to  balk  the  Mediter- 
ranean policy  of  M.  Delcasse,  and  to  sweep  that  Power 
into  the  orbit  of  the  Triple  Alliance ;  her  invention  of  a 
Moroccan  Question  as  a  means  of  cleaving  in  two  the 
Franco- British  block  which  had  only  just  been  welded; 
her  nervous,  violently  aggressive  manner,  so  cousue  de 
fil  blanc,  as  the  French  say — all  these  are  facts  fresh  in 
the  memory  not  only  of  the  professional  politician  but  of 
the  ordinary  observer.  And  the  more  Germany  wriggled, 
contrived,  meddled  and  stormed,  the  more  rooted  became 
the  Entente  Cordiale  in  the  hearts  of  Frenchmen  and  of 
Englishmen,  the  more  natural  seemed  the  miracle,  the 
more  real  the  joy  of  the  two  Chanceries  and  of  the  two 
peoples.  Only  a  few  keen-sighted  observers  in  either 
country  appeared  to  perceive,  amid  the  strains  of  opti- 
mistic jubilation  in  which  England  and  France  welcomed 
the  reconciliation  and  the  now  "  definitive  "  establish- 
ment of  European  equilibrium,  that  Germany,  by  the 
Titanic  blunder  of  her  old  Bismarckian  non-colonial 
policy,  had  closed  to  herself — politically — almost  every 
habitable  corner  of  the  globe;  yet  that  she  had  de- 
veloped a  great  material  civilization,  with  instincts  of 
economic  and  commercial  expansion  which  must  find  an 


164  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

outlet  or  burst.  Only  a  few  appeared  to  perceive  that 
she  was  not  likely  to  accept  the  new  status  quo  created 
by  the  Triple  Entente,  and  that  every  practical  device 
which  an  astute  Real  Politik,  unshackled  by  scruple, 
unpoisoned  by  the  sophistications  of  a  fanatical  idealism, 
and  inspired  by  patriotism,  could  suggest  or  invent, 
would  be  utilized  for  the  destruction  of  that  pact  which 
seemed  to  have  established  the  balance  of  power  in  Europe. 
If  it  had  not  been  for  the  issue  of  the  Russo-Japanese 
War — a  result  utterly  unforeseen  by  the  Quai  d'Orsay, 
and  the  perilous  consequences  of  which,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  French  interests,  had  never  been  taken  into 
account  in  France — the  French  nation  might  have  con- 
tinued, like  the  English,  to  remain,  as  a  whole,  blandly 
ignorant  of  strategic  conditions  and  of  international  re- 
lations on  the  Continent  of  Europe.  To  be  sure,  the 
Algeciras  Conference  and  the  Casablanca  incident  were 
yet  to  intervene  as  object-lessons  for  the  most  indifferent ; 
but  the  defeat  of  the  Russian  ally,  Russian  paralysis  as 
a  military  power  for  some  years  to  come,  was  an  event 
which,  at  the  time,  opened  the  eyes  of  even  the  least  dis- 
cerning of  French  observers.  WThile  it  enabled  them  to 
divine,  perhaps  better  than  they  otherwise  might  have 
done,  the  causes  of  the  audacity  of  Germany  in  her 
Moroccan  policy,  it  also  enhanced  for  them  the  value  of 
the  Entente  with  England,  and  made  them  all  the  more 
vigilant  as  to  the  preservation  of  that  Entente,  according 
to  the  conception  of  its  promoters.  British  politics,  both 
domestic  and  foreign,  were  bound  to  be  watched  by 
Frenchmen  as  jealously  as  they  watched  their  own,  and 
even  more  carefully  and  jealously  than  they  watched 
those  of  Russia.  England  had  partially  taken  the  place 
of  Russia  in  French  affections.  In  the  same  breath  in 
which  Frenchmen  repudiated,  and  sincerely  repudiated 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    165 

the  notion  that  the  Entente  was  dear  to  them  because  it 
meant  a  possible  revanche,  and  insisted,  and  sincerely  in- 
sisted, that  they  longed  above  all  for  European  peace, 
they  acknowledged  that  the  Entente  was  possible  only 
because  it  satisfied  the  common  interest  of  France  and 
England  in  thwarting  the  manoeuvres  of  a  common  foe. 
That  foe  was  Germany,  who  was  imperilling  British  sea- 
power  after  having  torn  great  strips  of  flesh  from  the  side 
of  France. 

France  has  never  desired  war,  but  she  has  never  wished 
for  a  peace  which  is  a  "  peace  at  any  price."1  During  the 
past  few  years,  for  the  first  time,  perhaps,  hi  history  since 
the  Dukes  of  Normandy  ceased  to  govern  both  at  Caen  and 
London,  Frenchmen  have  honestly,  even  cordially,  de- 
sired the  well-being  of  England.  Every  event  which  can 
contribute  to  England's  greatness  has  been  a  sincere  joy 
to  them.  Every  incident  tending  to  diminish  England's 
standing,  alter  her  traditions,  weaken  her  as  a  world- 
power,  has  been  regarded  in  France  with  surprise  and  with 
something  like  dismay.  These  words  apply  to  the  rank 
and  file  of  the  French  nation.  The  pervasive  genuine 
goodwill  of  Frenchmen  towards  England  after  1905  has 
been,  and  is,  a  fact  which  stands  for  all  it  is  worth,  all  it 
is  possible  to  make  out  of  it  for  diplomatic  ends,  even  in 
face  of  minor  differences  between  the  two  Governments. 

1  "  Aucun  gouvernement  et  aucun  peuple  ne  sont  plus  attaches  a  la 
pars  que  la  France.  II  n'est  pas  un  pays  qui  ait  donne  des  preuves 
plus  f  re"quentes  et  plus  deciaives  de  sangfroid,  de  sa  moderation  et  de 
sa  mesure.  II  n'en  est  pas  un  seul  qui,  plus  soucieux  de  ses  propres 
int^rets,  ait  mieux  respect^  les  droits  d'autruL  Notre  sentiment 
national  sait,  meme  aux  heures  difficiles,  conserver  une  dignite  qui 
s'interdit  les  provocations  et  les  menaces,  que  ne  peuvent  compromettre 
les  exhibitions,  d'ailleur  regrettables,  d'un  patriotisme  de  parade.  Ce 
grand  pays  vent  la  paix,  mais  settlement  la  paix,  qui  s'accorde  avec  sa 
fierte  et  sa  dignite,  non  la  paix  nee  de  la  peur."  Speech  of  M.  Barthou, 
Prime  Minister  of  France,  at  Caen,  May  4,  1913.  Cf.  note,  p.  198,  and 
note  1,  p.  295. 


166  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

But  the  one  thing  that  Frenchmen  saw  in  1910  and  1911, 
with  an  almost  supernatural  clearness,  after  the  ominous 
events  in  Central  Europe  and  the  Middle  East,  was  that 
for  France  to  remain  France,  England  must  not  cease  to 
be  England.  When  even  a  Lord  Curzon  expressed  the 
hope  of  settling  such  a  question  as  that  of  Muscat  by 
an  appeal  to  sentiment,  the  French  wondered  if  the  busi- 
nesslike and  level-headed  England  against  which  they 
had  fought  on  a  hundred  battle-fields,  the  England  with 
which  they  fancied  they  had  come  to  terms,  had  suddenly 
vanished  from  the  map.  They  saw  in  such  a  fact  as  this, 
as  they  saw  in  the  rhythm  of  the  humanitarian  Sabbat 
to  which  in  1911  all  England  seemed  to  be  dancing,  the 
evidence  of  British  insularity,  the  sign  of  England's 
ignorance  as  to  the  strategic  conditions  governing  Euro- 
pean politics,  the  apparently  hopeless  confirmation  of 
the  phrase  which  George  Meredith  often  used  to  the 
present  writer:  "  England's  political  intelligence  runs  to 
horns."  And  when  the  Secretary  for  War  sought  to 
drive  Field-Marshal  Lord  Roberts  into  a  corner,  by  his 
witty  but  futile  assertion  that  Lord  Roberts  was  in- 
sisting upon  preparing  for  the  "  logically  possible  " 
instead  of  for  the  "  reasonably  probable,"  Frenchmen 
asked  themselves  in  what  Teutonic  world  of  mediaeval 
scholasticism  that  Minister  had  acquired  his  dialects.1 

1  Some  months  later,  in  November  1912,  Viscount  Haldane,  then 
Lord  Chancellor,  rebuked  Lord  Roberts  for  being  ignorant  of  strategy, 
accusing  him  of  overlooking  the  fact  that  England's  safety  depended 
on  command  of  the  sea.  This  rebuke  fell  from  the  lips  of  the  man 
who,  some  years  before,  had  spoken  of  a  "  whole  nation  springing  to 
arms  on  war  being  declared  and  nobly  preparing  to  submit  itself  to 
six  months'  training  in  order  to  meet  the  invading  foe."  The  date 
chosen  by  Lord  Haldane  for  his  rebuke  was  the  eve  of  the  day  when 
Turkey  agreed  to  begin  negotiations  for  peace  after  a  war  that  had 
lasted  only  six  weeks,  and  had  driven  her  troops  under  the  walls  of 
Constantinople . 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     167 

Adversity,  in  a  word,  has  made  the  French  of  the  Third 
Republic  a  more  suspicious  people  than  the  nation  which 
fell  into  the  snare  of  the  mendacious  telegram  of  Ems. 
France  has  been  bruised  and  buffeted  by  England,  humili- 
ated and  flouted  by  Germany.  Even  a  race  less  eminently 
intelligent  could  not  fail  to  learn  something  from  so  harsh 
an  experience.  When  one  has  been  the  dupe  of  one's 
generous  sentiments  and  of  one's  doctrinaire  notions  of 
right,  only  two  refuges  are  left,  sainthood  or  common 
sense.  French  foreign  politics  have  begun  to  become 
practical,  after  having  been  as  sublimely  and  as  dan- 
gerously disinterested  as  were  those  of  the  ideologue 
Gladstone.  Europe  still  seems  to  find  it  difficult  to 
understand  that  business  methods  and  prudent  self- 
interest  can  ever  prevail  at  the  Quai  d'Orsay:  it  still 
thinks  France  amenable  to  blandishment  and  ready  to 
follow  the  marsh-lights  of  idealism.  Her  friends  and 
allies  have  at  last  learned  that  she  realizes  as  keenly  as 
Herr  von  Bethmann  Hollweg  that  Europe  is  Europe, 
that  Continental  politics  are  not  politics  in  a  Leyden  jar, 
and  that  the  old  saying  still  holds  good :  "  The  weak  will 
be  the  prey  of  the  strong  ";  but  in  1909,  1910  and  1911 
they  were  still  unaware  of  the  change,  and  the  sterility 
of  the  Triple  Entente  was  then  the  main  characteristic 
of  that  pact. 

The  feeling  in  France  in  1910  and  1911  was  that  the 
Triple  Entente  might  not  be  an  Alliance  in  the  technical 
sense  of  the  word,  but  that  if  it  were  not  an  Alliance, 
for  all  practical  purposes,  it  were  better  broken.  No 
Frenchman  was  inclined  to  quarrel  over  the  choice 
of  a  word  to  describe  the  relations  between  France  and 
England:  modern  politics  are  not  a  branch  of  semantics, 
and  French  experience  of  the  connotation  of  the  word 
'"  Alliance,"  as  employed  in  description  of  the  France- 


168  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Russian  pact,  had  not  been  calculated  to  arrest  the  growth 
of  a  salutary  scepticism  as  to  the  utility  of  "  alliances." 
But  if  the  relations  between  England  and  France,  if  the 
words  "  Entente  Cordiale  "  and  "Triple  Entente  "  mean 
anything,  they  mean  at  all  events  a  common  sense  of  the 
common  interests  uniting  the  three  Powers,  England, 
France  and  Russia;  and  it  was  obvious  even  before 
Agadir  that  they  ought  to  mean,  above  all  (as  even  The 
Times  and  the  Temps  agreed  in  acknowledging),  that 
these  three  Powers  had  one  vital  interest:  the  mainte- 
nance of  the  European  equilibrium.  What  every  French- 
man wanted  to  know  was  whether  Englishmen  had  as 
keen  a  sense  as  they  of  the  reality  of  this  vital  interest. 
In  France,  gratitude  for  the  inestimable  services  which 
England  had  rendered  her  whenever  the  Moroccan  diffi- 
culty menaced  the  peace  of  Europe,  was  still,  in  June 
1911,  just  before  Agadir,  a  living  sentiment.  But  if  the 
French  Parliament,  if  the  French  public,  had  drawn  any 
lesson  from  that  long-protracted  and  anxious  period,  it 
was  that  humanitarian  aspirations  were  a  dangerous 
luxury;  and  the  Moroccan  difficulty  was  not  the  only 
question  that  might  lead  to  war.  Of  the  two  great 
blunders  committed  by  the  otherwise  irreproachable 
statesman,  M.  Delcasse — his  blindness  to  the  fact  that, 
in  allowing  Russia  to  go  to  war  with  Japan,  France 
suffered  her  ally  to  paralyse  her  efficiency  in  Europe, 
and  his  neglect  to  secure  for  France  the  army  and  the 
navy  of  his  policy — the  French  perceived  that  the  latter 
mistake  was  incomparably  the  more  unpardonable  and 
the  more  heinous.1  M.  Clemenceau,  when  Prime  Min- 

1  The  Two  Years'  Military  Service  Bill  was  promulgated  on  March  21, 
1905,  and  on  March  31  William  II  went  ashore  at  Tangier,  where  he 
saluted  the  Sultan  as  an  "  independent  Sovereign."  A  few  weeks  later 
M.  Delcasse  fell  (see  p.  77  et  seq.).  A  "  speculative  diplomacy  "  (to 
borrow  the  phrase  of  M.  Charles  Maurras),  developed  independently  of 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     169 

ister,  left  the  British  Foreign  Office  no  peace  in  his  con- 
stant iteration  of  the  fact  that  England  seemed  bent  on 
repeating  the  blunder  of  M.  Delcasse.  One  of  M. 
Clemenceau's  main  objects  was  to  convert  the  Entente 
into  a  military  treaty  of  defensive  alliance.  No  one  saw 
more  clearly  than  he  that  in  the  Europe  of  to-day  "  splen- 
did isolation  "  was  an  impossible  ideal  for  England.  His 
views  became  those  of  his  reflecting  compatriots,  as  they 
observed  that  in  proportion  as  German  energy  became 
more  rampant,  and  the  Balkan  Problem  more  acute, 
England  seemed  to  be  curling  her  antennae  inward,  to  be 
losing  her  European  sense  and  becoming  more  and  more 
deeply  self-absorbed.  No  one  in  France,  in  1910  and 
1911,  was  ashamed  to  own  that  France  had  need  of  Eng- 
land. But  every  one  in  France  was  astounded  that 
Englishmen  did  not  perceive  that  they  had  an  even 
greater  need  of  France.  French  respect  for  England's 
judgment  received  a  blow  when  Englishmen  were  seen  to 
be  allowing  domestic  insular  cares,  and  even  the  grave 
and  beautiful  interests  inspired  by  the  noble  hieratic 
ceremony  of  the  Coronation,  to  exclude  from  their 
thought  all  sense  of  their  relative  position  in  the  world, 
and  of  their  own  Imperial  contacts.  The  French  won- 
dered whether  all  England  had  not  fallen  a  victim  to  the 
sleeping  sickness.  Above  a  supine  people  the  all-but- 
isolated  figure  of  Lord  Roberts  loomed  gigantically  for 
their  vision.  They  had  counted  on  England  because 
England  had  taught  them  to  dread  and  to  admire  her. 
Yet  at  certain  moments  England  seemed  to  be  selling  her 

the  naval  and  military  forces  that  it  represents,  inevitably  leads  to  em- 
barrassment, if  not  to  disaster.  This  is  a  lesson  that  France  has  par- 
tially learned.  The  election  of  1914  sanctioned  the  prudent  return  of 
the  French  Parliament  to  the  three  years'  military  service  system. 
Cf.  France  et  Attemagne,  by  Rene  Pinon  (Perrin,  1913,  pp.  161-163). 


170  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

birthright  of  practical  sense  and  world-wide  dominion 
for  futile  and  destructive  domestic  measures,  and  hu- 
manitarian dreams  that  were  the  negation  of  an  intelli- 
gent foreign  policy.  Even  before  Agadir  the  one  con- 
dition of  efficiency  for  the  Entente,  as  well  as  of  European 
peace,  was  seen  in  France  to  be  that  England  should  have 
not  only  the  Navy  but  also  the  Army  of  her  traditional 
policy.  Lord  Curzon  was  applauded  when  he  said  that 
in  England  the  Foreign  Secretary  was  exactly  in  the 
position  of  Moses  in  the  battle  with  the  Amalekites:  his 
two  hands  had  to  be  held  up  by  the  Ministers  for  the  Army 
and  the  Navy.  From  1910  to  1911  France  could  not — 
even  at  Constantinople — fight  the  battles  of  the  English 
alone.  Yet  Lord  Haldane  rejected  the  warnings  of 
Lord  Roberts  and  of  the  Military  Correspondent  of  The 
Times1  ;  Sir  Edward  Grey  called  down  on  his  head  the 
crushing  retort  of  the  German  Chancellor;  and  when 
Mr.  Jowett  asked  the  Under-Secretary  of  State  for 
Foreign  Affairs  "  if,  during  his  term  of  office,  any  under- 
taking, promise  or  understanding  had  been  given  to 
France,  that  in  certain  eventualities  British  troops  would 
be  sent  to  assist  the  operations  of  the  French  Army,"  the 
answer  was  "  in  the  negative."  The  pretty  little  German 
pocket  atlas  for  1910,  published  by  the  great  house  of 
Justus  Perthes,  described  the  North  Sea  as  the 
"  Deutsche  Meer,"  so  that  (as  the  French  weekly  news- 
paper L'Opinion  recalled  before  Agadir)  Great  Britain  se 
trouve  done  baignee  par  la  mer  allemande !  Yet  there 
were  little  Englanders  still.  The  abolition  of  the  me- 
ridian of  Paris,  with  the  substitution  for  it  of  that  of 
Greenwich,  had  its  compensations.  But,  in  France,  at 

1  "  The  preservation  of  France  from  an  attack  (by  Germany  before 
the  weight  of  Russia  begins  to  tell)  is  absolutely  vital  for  our  (England's) 
subsequent  security." — Times,  April  7,  1911. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     171 

all  events,  such  events  were  not  regarded  as  being  in  them- 
selves a  sufficient  justification  of  the  raison  d'etre  of  the 
Entente  Cordiale  during  the  eighteen  months  in  which  Ger- 
many— after  having,  in  collusion  with  Count  Aehrenthal, 
shuffled  all  the  Balkan  cards  and  rearranged  the  map  of 
Europe — had  been  negotiating  so  effectively  with  Russia 
that  a  man  like  M.  Hanotaux  could  write,  however  ex- 
travagantly: Les  entretiens  de  Potsdam  ont  cree,  de  Vaveu 
de  tons,  une  situation  telle  qu'on  est  bien  oblige  de  se  de- 
mander,  maintenant,  si  la  Russie  a  rompu  le  pacte  de  la 
Triple  Entente.  M.  Pichon,  before  he  fell  from  office, 
eloquently  explained  that  Russia  had  done  nothing  of 
the  kind,  and  that  all  was  for  the  best  in  the  best  of  all 
possible  Triple  Ententes.  Sir  Edward  Grey  echoed  him 
in  the  same  key  of  optimism,  forgetting,  like  his  col- 
league of  the  Quai  d'Orsay,  that  although,  from  1909- 
1911,  Constant inople  was  the  diplomatic  centre  where  the 
new  European  equilibrium  must  be  delicately  evolved,  it 
was  the  place  above  all  others  where  France  and  England 
seemed  incapable  of  a  common  action.  M.  Pichon 
backed  The  Times,  or  The  Times  backed  M.  Pichon,  on 
the  question  of  Flushing;  but  The  Times  was  not  the 
British  Government,  and  as  little  was  heard  of  M.  Pichon 's 
protests  in  defence  of  Belgian  neutrality  as  of  the  fate  of 
the  British  ultimatum  presented  to  the  Persian  Govern- 
ment and  ridiculously  backed  out  of,  to  the  astonishment 
of  the  Quai  d'Orsay.  But  German  Welt-politik  was 
following  then,  as  it  follows  to-day,  the  line  linking  the 
two  horns  of  a  crescent  which  might  well  pass  for  the 
great  type-dilemma:  that  of  Koweit-Flushing .  Every 
one  beheld  hi  1911  how  Russia  had  solved  that  dilemma, 
what  Russia  thought  of  the  problem  of  the  Baghdad 
Railway.  She  had  gone  to  Potsdam  and  had  virtually 
seemed  to  be  leaving  France  and  England  to  settle 


172  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

matters  together — or  apart — as  best  they  could.  Pending 
the  settlement,  moreover,  England  was  arming  an  ex- 
pedition in  the  Persian  Gulf  to  undo  the  ant i- British 
work  of  anarchy  and  piracy  complacently  favoured  by 
France  at  Muscat.1  When  the  French  public  noted 
facts  of  this  nature,  as  they  did  note  them;  when  they 
beheld,  as  M.  Tardieu,  the  foreign  editor  of  the  Temps, 
soberly  enough  put  it  at  the  time,  that  il  semble  admis  que 
chacun  doit  oiler  de  son  cdte  sans  concert,  sans  communica- 
tion prealable,  au  petit  bonheur,  they  concluded  that 
chancellerie  was  an  excellent  name  for  the  rocking-chairs 
in  which,  with  discordant  rhythm,  the  Foreign  Ministers 
of  the  Triple  Entente  had  been  agitating,  ever  since  the 
annexation  of  Bosnia-Herzegovina,  the  graver  questions 
of  European  policy.  They  did  not  know  that  Russian 
initiative  at  Potsdam  was  ultimately,  indeed,  to  have 
the  happiest  consequences  for  the  Triple  Entente.  How 
could  they  divine  that  at  Potsdam,  Russia,  with  her  keen 
sense  and  liking  for  Oriental  problems,  had  assumed 
responsibility  for  the  beginnings  of  that  rapid  liquida- 
tion of  Middle  Eastern  questions  which  the  secret  nego- 
tiations of  1913-1914  between  Turkey  and  the  Powers 
were  shortly  to  achieve  (vide  p.  305,  note),  and  that,  al- 
though, to  the  scandal  of  certain  observers  (vide  the 
brilliant  and  remarkable  articles,  "  Finance  et  Diplo- 

1  The  settlement  of  February  4,  1914,  in  virtue  of  which  the  French 
Government  waived  the  privileges  accorded  their  nationals  by  the 
Franco-Muscat  treaty  of  1844  and  the  Anglo-French  treaty  of  1862  to 
carry  on  a  contraband  trade  in  arms  between  D Jibuti  and  the  North- 
West  Frontier  of  India,  is  only  a  lame  provisional  solution  of  the 
difficulty.  The  efficacy  of  this  "settlement"  will,  no  doubt,  be 
enhanced  and  prolonged  if  England  manifests  reciprocal  good-will 
towards  France  in  doing  all  in  her  power  to  repress  the  gun-running 
trade  between  Morocco  and  Gibraltar.  A  hint  to  this  effect  was  given 
by  M.  Paul  Cambon  in  the  note  addressed  by  him  to  Sir  Edward  Grey 
in  regard  to  the  Muscat  question. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     173 

matie  "  by  M.  Victor  Berard  in  the  Grande,  Revue  of 
June  and  July  1914),  this  liquidation  was  to  do  away 
for  all  time  with  the  great  principle  of  the  "  integrity  of 
the  Ottoman  Empire,"  the  range  of  the  action  of  the 
Triple  Entente  was  to  be  enlarged,  and  the  common 
interests  of  its  members  were  to  be  consolidated  ?  (see 
p.  347). 

In  1911,  in  fact,  after  four  years  of  discordant  action, 
in  the  summer  months  just  preceding  Agadir,  Frenchmen 
were  beginning  to  conclude,  from  their  perception  of  the 
hollowness  of  certain  optimistic  official  assurances  as  to 
the  integrity  and  efficiency  of  the  Triple  Entente,  that 
they  would  perhaps  do  well  to  withdraw  from  a  pact 
which  had  served  its  time.  Second  thoughts  reminded 
them,  however,  that  it  would  be  unfortunate  for  them, 
and  unfortunate  for  England,  if  they  should  take  to  medi- 
tating too  deeply  on  the  idea  that  had  recently  been  put 
to  them  by  an  ex-Foreign  Minister,  M.  Hanotaux,  in  his 
sensational  article,  "  II  Faut  Choisir."  It  was,  after  all, 
too  late  then  to  return  to  the  principle  of  President  Grevy. 
Germany  was  not  Germany  when  that  statesman  recom- 
mended to  France  a  policy  of  absolute  isolation ;  but  Ger- 
many was  Germany  in  1911.  And,  by  the  same  token, 
England  was  England  then,  but  England  was  not,  in  1910 
and  1911,  the  same  England.  That  England  should  once 
more  become  England  was  felt  on  the  Continent,  every- 
where save  in  Germany,  to  be  the  crying  European  need ; 
and  it  was  the  most  genuine  longing  of  France.  In  the 
summer  of  1911,  more  than  one  disinterested  observer 
felt  like  saying,  "  England  would  be  more  than  short- 
sighted, she  would  be  ignoring  her  own  interests,  and  the 
interests  of  European  peace,  if,  draping  herself  in  her 
Coronation  robes,  she  were  to  allow  France  to  cry  over 
the  Channel,  into  her  indifferent  ears,  the  words  of 


174  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Henry  IV  to  Crillon :  '  We  have  conquered  at  Arques, 
but  you  were  not  there,  my  Crillon  !' ' 

Happily  for  the  restoration  of  the  old-time  efficiency 
of  the  Triple  Entente,  Germany  was  at  that  very  hour 
meditating  the  action  which  was  to  rouse  England  from 
her  political  lethargy,  to  make  her  contemplate  from 
another  angle  the  naif  proposal  of  the  American  President 
for  the  signing  of  a  treaty  of  unrestricted  arbitration, 
and  to  cause  her  to  rush,  in  her  own  interests,  to  the 
rescue  of  France,  that  the  two  Powers  might  stand 
shoulder  to  shoulder  at  Arques.1 

Certain  proposals  of  President  Taft,  relative  to  the 
settlement  of  "  matters  of  national  honour  "  by  Courts  of 
Arbitration,  had  already  begun  to  work  havoc  in  Eng- 
land. They  had  been  welcomed  on  March  13,  1911,  by 
Sir  Edward  Grey  as  "bold  and  courageous  words." 
England  and  the  United  States  seemed  to  be  wondering 
why  the  President  of  the  French  Republic  and  the  Tsar 
of  Russia  were  so  long  in  tendering  their  congratulations. 
"  It  would  seem  as  if  France  would  be  the  next  nation 
to  come  into  line,"  exclaimed  one  of  the  makers  of  opinion 
in  the  United  States.  Foreigners,  however,  overlooked, 
as  usual,  the  positive  conditions  which,  whether  they 
liked  it  or  not,  were  bound  to  determine  the  attitude  of 
present-day  Frenchmen  towards  such  demonstrations  as 
those  of  the  English-speaking  communities  with  regard 
to  treaties  for  the  abolition  of  war. 

The  foreigner  easily  falls  a  victim  to  optical  illusions 
when  he  tries  to  penetrate  the  reaches  of  French  idealism. 
What  the  English-speaking  world  chiefly  knows  of  France 
is  her  ideologic  bent:  the  date  of  1789,  the  Contrat  Social 
of  Rousseau  and  the  Declaration  of  the  Eights  of  Man, 
the  Revolution  and  the  Walkyrie  dash  of  the  Republican 

1  Seep.  301. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     175 

armies  over  the  toppling  thrones  of  Europe,  and  the 
mystic  words  which  were  the  deeper  undertone  of  the 
Marseillaise :  Liberte,  Egalitc,  Fraternite.  "With  that 
knowledge  it  couples  the  recollection  of  the  doctrinaire 
policies  of  the  Reveur  Couronne  of  the  Second  Empire, 
the  Emperor  who  was  ever  ready  to  rush  to  the  succour 
of  fallen  nationalities  and  who  professed  to  prolong 
thereby  the  democratic  war-cry  of  the  volunteers  of  the 
Revolution.  And  finally,  the  English-speaking  world, 
face  to  face  with  forty  years  of  the  Third  Republic,  ad- 
mires the  altruism  of  her  political  philosophy  of  "soli- 
darity " — in  reality,  a  dream  of  the  Masonic  inspirers  of 
that  Republic — the  magnificent  ten  years'  battle  between 
Individualism  and  the  Raison  d'Etat  in  the  great  drama 
of  the  Dreyfus  Case,  the  constant  urbanity  of  her  attitude 
("  L' Adaptation  des  Alliances  "),  her  diplomatic  inter- 
vention at  moments  of  tension  between  the  Powers  (the 
"  Dogger  Bank  "),  and  her  undeviating  loyalty  to  the 
ideal  that  maintains  the  Tribunal  of  the  Hague.1 

1  At  the  very  moment  when  Louis  Napoleon,  warned  over  and  over 
again  by  his  military  attache  in  Berlin,  Colonel  Stoffel,  and  by  the 
officer  in  command  of  the  place  of  Strassbourg,  General  Ducrot,  of  the 
intentions  of  Prussia  to  attack  France,  undertook  to  reform  the  French 
army  (1867),  the  Republican  party  proceeded  to  organize  "pacifist"' 
associations  and  leagues  in  favour  of  disarmament.  The  Imperial  bill 
was  attacked  before  the  Corps  Legislatif  by  Jules  Simon,  Magnier, 
Pelletan,  and  Jules  Favre.  In  the  sitting  of  January  2,  1868,  Marshal 
Niel,  who  defended  the  bill,  was  apostrophized  as  follows  by  Jules 
Favre:  "  Vous  voulez  done  faire  de  la  France  une  caserne  ?"  and  he 
replied  in  words  that  MM.  d'Estournelles  de  Constant,  Jaures  and 
Bourgeois  would  appear  to  have  forgotten :  "  Et  vous,  prenez  garde  d'en 
faire  un  cimetiere."  Two  years  later  came  Sedan.  (Cf.  Chuquet:  La 
Ouerre,  1870-71.)  M.  Goyau  cites  in  his  admirable  book,  L'Idee  de 
Patrie  et  Humanitarisme,  p.  285,  the  pathetic  words  of  Jules  Ferry  after 
the  war.  ';  Do  you  remember,"  said  Ferry,  "  that  under  the  Empire 
we  had  little  good  to  say  of  militarism  ?  Do  you  recall  those  vague 
aspirations  towards  general  disarmament  .  .  .  that  characterized  the 
democracy  of  the  time  ?  A  number  of  us  professed  those  ideas  then. . . . 


176  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

This  France — which  is  only  one,  and  not  the  whole 
France — is  the  France  visible  from  over  the  sea  and  from 
over  the  Channel;  but  it  is  a  France  of  mirage,  a  mirage 
that  has  often  duped  and  lured  the  "  Anglo-Saxon  "  or 
the  Levantine  vision,  but  has  never  deluded  for  long  the 
sceptical  scrutiny  of  the  Powers  of  the  Continent.  There 
is  quite  another  France,  a  much  more  real  France,  the 
France  that  has  evolved  not  on  some  distant  Atlantis, 
nor  yet  upon  an  island  separated  by  an  estranging  sea 
from  intimate  Continental  contacts.  There  is  the  France 
that  has  all  along  formed  an  integral  part  of  Continental 
European  soil.  That  France,  in  order  to  keep  up  with 
the  fashion  of  the  hour,  has  more  than  once  voted  purely 
academic  resolutions  in  favour  of  disarmament,  calling 
on  the  Government  "to  exert  every  effort  to  place  on 
the  programme  of  work  at  the  next  Hague  Conference, 
in  agreement  with  the  friendly  and  allied  Powers,  the 
question  of  the  simultaneous  limitation  of  armaments  " 
(February  23,  1911).  But  the  same  France  noted  with 
singular  satisfaction  on  April  30,  1911,  the  cautious  and 
lukewarm  terms  in  which  the  British  Sovereign,  address- 
ing the  Lord  Mayor  after  the  Guildhall  Meeting  held  to 

But  is  there  a  single  one,  I  ask  you,  who  has  not  been  converted  by 
events  ?  This  country  has  seen  the  war  of  1870 ;  it  has  turned  its  backfor 
ever  on  these  dangerous  and  deceptive  chimaeras."  Few  books  of  con- 
temporary history  are  more  illuminating  than  the  volume  by  M.  Georges 
Goyau,  from  which  the  preceding  passage  is  cited.  It  is,  in  a  word,  the 
record  of  the  brave  and  naive  efforts  of  the  Sociability  and  Generosity 
of  the  French — certain  Frenchmen!  — to  inoculate  Europe  with  the  love 
of  peace ;  a  history  that  never  could  have  been  written  if  the  idealistic 
Republicans,  who  had  coagulated  into  a  fixed  idea  the  revolutionary 
imaginations  of  the  Jacobins,  had  not  remained  (until  about  ten  years 
ago)  criminally  ignorant  of  geography  and  of  European  affairs.  Even 
they,  however,  have  finally  learned  that  "  1'humanite  a  besoin,  pour 
garder  la  France  comme  lumiere,  comme  verbe  et  meme  comme  parure, 
que  la  France  ne  cesse  point  d'etre  la  patrie  frangaise." 


consider  the  proposals  of  the  President  of  the  United 
States  of  America,  perfunctorily  affirmed  his  "  gratifica- 
tion "  at  receiving  "  these  records  of  opinions,  unani- 
mously expressed,  upon  a  question  of  such  supreme  and 
far-reaching  importance,  by  an  assemblage  so  representa- 
tive of  the  various  lines  of  thought  in  our  religious, 
political  and  social  life." 

Late  in  the  evening  of  May  9,  1911,  the  news  reached 
Paris  and  Berlin  that  the  Provincial  Committee  of  the 
Reichsland,  the  Delegation  of  Alsace-Lorraine,  had  that 
afternoon  been  prorogued.  The  Imperial  Cabinet  order 
dissolving  this  Assembly  was  dated  May  6,  the  first  day 
of  the  Emperor's  visit  to  Alsace,  and  was  issued  from 
Strasbourg.  Forty-eight  hours  later  the  Alsace-Lorraine 
Constitution  and  Finance  Bills  were  rejected  by  the  Com- 
mittee of  the  Reichstag.  Commenting  on  the  confusion 
that  reigned  in  the  Committee  previous  to  the  rejection 
of  these  measures,  the  Berlin  correspondent  of  The  Times 
observed:  "Now,  as  so  often,  one  is  tempted  to  believe 
that  most  people  in  Berlin  and  throughout  the  greater 
part  of  the  German  Empire  know  no  more  about  Alsace- 
Lorraine  than  about  the  German  colonies,  if  they  indeed 
know  as  much."  Paris,  France  in  general,  were  for- 
tunately better  informed. 

There  is  a  certain  historical  document  which  may  have 
been  forgotten  in  Berlin,  which,  no  doubt,  is  little  known 
in  London  and  in  Washington,  but  which,  if  it  does  not 
yet  figure,  as  it  ought  to  figure,  on  the  walls  of  every 
French  school,  is  still  fresh  in  the  memories  of  most 
French  men.  It  is  the  unanimous  Declaration  of  the 
Deputies  of  the  French  Departments  of  the  Bas-Rhin, 
the  Haut-Rhin,  the  Moselle,  the  Meurthe,  and  the  Vosges, 
protesting  against  the  alienation  of  Alsace-Lorraine,  and 
affirming  the  immutable  determination  of  the  population 


178  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

of  these  two  Provinces  to  remain  Frenchmen.  One 
hundred  and  seven  members  of  the  National  Assembly — 
among  whom  were  M.  Brisson,  the  late  President  of  the 
French  Chamber  of  Deputies,  and  M.  Clemenceau,  who 
avenged  M.  Delcasse  at  Casablanca — voted  against  the 
preliminaries  of  peace  ceding  Alsace  and  a  portion  of 
Lorraine  to  Germany.  They  had  assumed  this  sublime 
responsibility  after  perusal  of  such  passages  as  follow — 
and  it  would  be  a  crime  not  to  preserve  the  original 
language  of  the  Declaration : — 

"L'Europe  ne  peut  pennettre  ni  ratifier  1'abandon  d' Alsace  et  de  la 
Lorraine.  Gardiennes  des  regies  de  la  justice  et  du  droit  des  gens,  los 
nations  civilisees  ne  sauraient  rester  plus  longtemps  insensibles  au  sort 
de  leur  voisine,  sous  peine  d'etre  a  leur  tour  victimes  des  attentats 
qu'elles  auraient  tolere's.  L'Europe  moderne  ne  peut  laisser  saisir  un 
peuple  comme  un  vil  troupeau ;  elle  ne  peut  rester  sourde  aux  protesta- 
tions repetees  des  populations  menacees;  elle  doit  a  sa  propre  conserva- 
tion d'interdire  de  pareils  abus  de  force.  Elle  sait  d'ailleurs  que  1'unite 
de  la  France  est  aujourd'hui,  comme  dans  le  passe,  une  garantie  de 
1'ordre  general  du  monde,  une  barriere  contre  1'esprit  de  conquete  et 
d' invasion.  La  paix  faite  au  prix  d'une  cession  de  territoire  ne  serait 
qu'une  treve  ruineuse  et  non  une  paix  definitive.  Elle  serait  pour  tous 
une  cause  d'agitations  intestines,  une  provocation  legitime  et  per- 
manente  a  la  guerre. 

"En  resume,  1' Alsace  et  la  Lorraine  protestent  hautement  contre 
toute  cession;  la  France  ne  peut  la  consentir,  1'Europe  ne  peut  la 
sanctionner. 

"  En  foi  de  quoi  nous  prenons  nos  concitoyens  de  France,  les  gou- 
vernements  et  les  peuples  du  monde  entier,  a  temoins  que  nous  tenons 
d'avance  pour  nuls  et  non  avenus  tous  actes  et  traites,  vote  ou  plebiscite, 
qui  consentiraient  abandon,  en  f  aveur  de  l'6tranger,  de  toute  ou  partie 
de  nos  provinces  de  1'AJsace  et  de  la  Lorraine." 

This  protest  was  drawn  up  by  Gambetta  at  Bordeaux. 
That  great  patriot,  who  was  to  become  the  Tyrtaeus  of 
la  revanche,  had  shown  himself  a  seer:  "  La  paix  au  prix 
d'une  cession  de  territoire  ne  sera  qu'une  treve  ruineuse 
et  non  une  paix  definitive.  Elle  serait  pour  tous  une  cause 
d'agitations  intestines,  une  provocation  legitime  et  per- 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     179 

manente."  Napoleon  III  was  no  less  prophetic.  In  a 
letter,  written  to  the  Countess  de  Mercy-Argenteau  just 
after  the  treaty  of  peace  closing  the  Franco-German  War, 
he  said : — 

"  How  can  one  not  be  discouraged  in  presence  of  the  conditions  of 
peace  imposed  upon  France  ?  I  admit  we  were  the  aggressors ;  I  admit 
we  have  been  beaten,  and  that  we  were  obliged  therefore  to  pay  the 
costs  of  the  war  or  abandon  a  part  of  our  territory.  But  to  condemn 
us  to  both  at  once  is  very  hard.  ...  In  such  conditions  it  is  not  a 
peace  that  the  German  Emperor  is  concluding,  it  is  tantamount  to 
killing  us,  and  instead  of  re-establishing  peace,  it  sows  for  the  future  hatred 
and  distrust.  Is  this  good  policy,  even  for  Germany  ?  I  do  not  think 
so.  The  present  state  of  European  civilization  causes  the  nations  to  be 
bound  up  one  with  another  by  a  host  of  common  interests  so  that  the 
ruin  of  one  reacts  on  a'l  the  rest.  ...  If  the  German  Emperor  and 
Bismarck  had  profoundly  reflected  on  the  state  of  Europe,  they  would 
have  declared  that  while  France  remained  deprived  of  a  stable  and  con- 
sequently legitimate  Government  they  regarded  suspension  of  hostilities 
merely  as  a  truce,  giving  them  an  opportunity  to  take  measures  to 
secure  a  military  position  more  favourable  if  the  struggle  began  again, 
but  that  once  there  was  a  Government  based  on  right,  and  accepted  by 
the  nation,  they  would  be  more  concerned  as  to  peace  for  the  future 
than  as  to  the  possession  of  certain  discontented  departments  detached 
from  a  nation  in  distress.  That  would  have  been  la  grande  politique, 
The  hatred  of  Germany  would  have  disappeared  as  by  enchantment, 
peace  would  have  been  assured  for  many  years,  confidence  would  have 
been  restored,  trade  relations  immediately  resumed,  and  the  German 
Emperor  would  have  obtained  greater  glory  than  he  will  acquire  by  the 
possession  of  Metz  and  Strasbourg." 

Forty  years  of  growing  armaments  are  but  the  con- 
firmation of  this  melancholy  prophecy.  In  a  proud  and 
noble  letter  on  "  The  Role  of  Bismarck  "  which  Monsieur 
Emile  Ollivier,  author  of  UEmpire  Liberal  and  Minister 
of  Napoleon  III,  addressed  to  Professor  Hans  Delbriick, 
and  which  was  published  in  the  Figaro  of  May  14,  1908, 
the  following  passage  occurs : — 

"  No  one  contests  Bismarck's  glorious  place  among  the  dominators 
of  the  world.  But  political  facts  ere  not  to  be  judged  by  their  immediate 
consequences.  There  are  distant  consequences  which  convert  into 


180  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

calamities  what  had  seemed  to  be  good  fortune,  and  which  turn  into 
bitterness  victories  that  had  been  received  with  rejoicing.  The  reflecting 
observer  already  perceives  the  sombre  morrows  of  the  policy  which  led  you 
Germans  to  success.  Have  you  gained  anything  in  conquering  popula- 
tions whom  you  torment,  who  hate  you,  curse  you,  and  are  merely 
waiting  for  a  favourable  circumstance  to  rise  up  against  you  ?  Was  not 
the  fact  that  you  have  made  it  impossible  to  come  to  an  understanding, 
without  arrifrre  pensee,  with  us,  a  heavy  price  to  pay  for  the  accession 
of  territory  which  was  not  needed  for  your  Unity  ?  Has  your  security 
been  augmented  by  the  fact  of  your  having  afflicted  and  buffetted  a 
nation  whose  humiliations  never  last  for  more  than  a  time,  and  who 
suddenly  on  the  morrow  of  a  Soubise  or  a  Bazaine,  may  behold  the 
advent  of  a  Turenne  or  a  Pelissier  ?  A  state  of  reciprocal  distrust 
between  France  and  Germany  is  a  permanent  cause  of  tumult  in 
Europe" 

Frenchmen  well  knew  why  the  dream  of  unrestricted 
Anglo-American  arbitration  must  always  plausibly  appeal 
to  Englishmen,  and  in  1911,  above  all,  they  understood 
why  a  dangerous  proposal  like  that  of  Mr.  Taft  was  so 
seductive  to  the  eyes  both  of  worried  and  tired  states- 
men and  of  a  people  familiar  with  Isaiah.  Frenchmen 
are  little  given  to  reading  the  Bible,  but  they  have  their 
own  political  sacred  document,  a  Gallic  Table  of  the  Law, 
known  as  Les  Droits  de  VHomme ;  and  the  imaginations 
of  many  of  them,  fed  therein  on  an  ideal  of  abstract 
Justice,  have  assimilated  the  phraseology  of  all  the  har- 
bingers of  the  Millennium,  from  a  Quinet  and  a  Michelet 
to  a  Jaures  and  a  d'Estournelles  de  Constant.  All  French- 
men, furthermore,  clearly  enough  perceive  how  special 
are  the  cases  of  England  and  the  United  States,  and  they 
saw  in  1911  how  ripe  was  the  hour  in  England  for  the 
success  of  a  meeting  like  that  at  Guildhall,  where  Mr. 
Asquith  and  Mr.  Balfour  (described  by  the  Primate  of 
England  as  "The  Great  Twin  Brethren")  joined  with 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  with  all  the  prelates 
of  all  the  Churches  of  Christian,  and  even  of  Rabbinical, 
England,  in  organizing  a  Crusade  of  Peace,  to  the  cry  of 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    181 

Dieu  le  veut — the  same  cry,  by  the  way,  to  which  the 
Prussians  marched  down  the  Champs  Elysees.  Equally 
apparent  to  Frenchmen  at  the  time  was  the  utility  of 
such  a  Crusade  as  a  diversion — and  a  possible  solution — 
at  a  moment  of  Imperial  crisis,  when  the  Colonies  were 
breaking  away  as  "  Dominions  "  from  their  island  moor- 
ings. The  positive  advantages,  for  England,  of  an  ar- 
rangement with  the  United  States,  which  might  do  even 
more  than  diminish  the  possibilities  of  war,  which  might 
conceivably,  in  some  distant  future,  lead  up  to  a  kind 
of  "Anglo-Saxon  "  Amphictyonic  Council,  were  carefully 
analysed  in  Paris.  But  what  France  also  understood, 
and  what  America  and  England  herself  seemed  less 
clearly  to  see,  was  that  for  her  to  follow  in  the  wake  of 
Mr.  Taft,  of  Sir  Edward  Grey,  of  the  Twin  Parliamentary 
Brethren,  and  of  the  Prelates  of  the  Guildhall  meeting, 
would  be  to  succumb  to  the  form  of  folly  known  in  the 
idiom  of  the  Primate  of  England  as  ' '  tempting  Provi- 
dence." 

Never  has  France  been  less  suitably  placed  than  to-day 
for  signing  a  treaty  automatically  submitting  to  The 
Hague,  or  to  any  other  tribunal,  differences  affecting  her 
vital  interests,  independence,  or  honour.  Nor  can  Ger- 
many adopt  such  a  peace  policy.  Neither  France  nor 
Germany  can.  The  reason  why  disarmament — or  any 
measure  favouring  it — is  impossible  for  France,  is  not  that 
Germany  would  make  war  upon  her.  It  is  said  that 
Germany  requires  twenty  years  of  peace,  and  it  is  certain 
that  the  excessive  production  in  modern  industrial  Ger- 
many would  cause  any  serious  interruption  of  her  com- 
mercial activity  to  provoke  a  formidable  krach  ;  but  France 
would  go  morally  to  pieces,  she  would  be  gangrened  by 
humanitarianism,  if,  ignoring  political  conditions  through- 
out the  world,  political  things-as-they-are,  she  were  to 


182  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

listen,  as  President  Taft  listened  in  1910  and  1911,  to 
the  appeal  of  the  eloquent  members  of  the  Committee 
of  the  Association  of  International  Conciliation.  It  has 
already  been  seen  that  one  of  the  consequences  of 
the  Russian  Alliance  was  to  engender  "  pacifism  "  in 
France.1 

The  more  cocardier  the  spirit  of  France,  the  more  remote 
becomes  her  hope  of  recovering  Alsace-Lorraine  save  by 
war;  the  more  she  is  doomed  to  play  into  the  hands  of 
Germany,  the  more  she  retards  the  ideal  of  disarmament, 
and  the  more  she  prolongs  the  evil  consequences  of  the 
crime  of  the  framers  of  the  Treaty  of  Frankfort.  Yet,  if 
she  be  not  cocardier,  if  her  rulers  do  not  do  all  in  their 
power  to  preserve  the  mainsprings  of  her  national  pride, 
if  they  do  not  seek  to  arrest  the  progress  of  humani- 
tarianism,  France  loses  her  self-respect,  sells  her  birth- 
right, signs  her  death-warrant.  No  more  tragic  dilemma 
was  ever  presented  to  a  nation.  As  long  as  the  Alsace- 
Lorraine  wound  remains  open,  Europe,  the  world,  cannot 

1  See  pp.  35  et  seq.,  159  et  seq.  This  is  also  the  view  of  a  remarkable 
diagnostician,  M.  Andre  Cheradame.  Cf.  La  Crise  Franfaise,  pp.  203, 
204.  Note  as  well  a  striking  passage  by  M.  Faguet,  in  his  Introduction 
to  the  Memoirs  of  M.  Arthur  Meyer,  Ce  que  mes  yeux  ont  vu  : — 

"  The  Russian  Alliance  was  certainly  a  good  thing  in  itself  (says 
M.  Faguet),  although  we  have  all  along  rendered  Russia  a  good  many 
more  services  than  she  has  rendered  us.  Still,  it  was  a  good  thing  in 
itself.  But,  nevertheless,  we  must  not  overlook  the  facts  that  from  a 
certain  point  of  view  it  did  us  considerable  harm;  I  mean,  moral  harm. 
Until  the  Alliance,  hope  of  reparation  for  the  disasters  of  1870  was  a 
living  sentiment  in  French  hearts.  After  the  Alliance,  the  terms  of 
which  were  unknown,  but  which  every  one  was  aware  to  be  merely 
defensive,  it  was  more  or  less  distinctly  understood  that  the  Alliance 
implied  our  acceptance  of  the  diminution  of  France,  not  merely  in 
presence  of  the  Conqueror,  but  in  the  presence  of  a  third  party,  and  that 
that  diminution  was  consecrated  by  a  diplomatic  act  of  European 
importance,  so  that,  in  a  way,  the  signature  of  Russia  was  affixed  to  the 

Treaty  of  Frankfort I  date  from  the  Russian  Alliance  le  flechisse* 

merit,  m-jmentane,  je  Fespere,  du  patriotism*  en  France." 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     183 

expect  France  to  accept  the  idea  of  disarmament,  or  of 
arbitration  on  points  of  national  honour.1 

These  are  facts  which  the  author  of  The  Great  Illusion 
does  not  seem  to  have  adequately  taken  into  account. 

Mr.  Norman  Angell  has  written  in  the  interests  of  peace 
a  volume  of  over  three  hundred  pages,  entitled  The  Great 
Illusion.  He  has  blinded  his  eyes,  like  the  legendary 
ostrich,  to  a  whole  series  of  facts,  the  existence  of  which 
radically  disturbs  the  entire  perspective,  and  compro- 
mises the  practical  value  of  his  argument.  It  is  quite 
true,  as  he  says,2  that  there  is  a  greater  difference  between 

1  The  attitude  of  Germany,  at  successive  Peace  Congresses,  con- 
sistently opposing  all  "  peaceful "  proposals,  has  been  a  more  effective 
lesson  to  France  than  perhaps  to  the  rest  of  the  world.  The  late  Baron 
Marschall  von  Bieberstein,  who  was  sent  to  London  to  make  a  final 
assault  on  the  Entente.  Cordiale,  manoeuvred  at  the  second  Hague  Con- 
ference against  the  policy  of  the  British  delegates  favouring  the  prin- 
ciple of  obligatory  arbitration,  hi  a  way  that  France,  at  least,  has  not 
forgotten.  As  the  Paris  correspondent  of  The  Times  has  written  (Times, 
May  11,  1912, — he  was  then  the  special  representative  of  that  paper  at 
The  Hague):— 

"  The  most  amazing  thing  was  to  witness  the  way  hi  which  Baron  von 
Marschall,  up  till  almost  the  very  end  of  the  Conference,  retained  the 
confidence  of  those,  including  the  French  delegates,  who  were  striving 
to  draw  up  a  list  of  obligatory  subjects  of  arbitration,  while  he  himself 
was  skilfully  helping  to  reduce  their  list  ad  absurdum.  As  was  remarked 
by  an  eminent  delegate  shortly  before  the  final  sitting  of  the  Conference, 
all  that  we  have  now  agreed  upon  as  the  subject  of  obligatory  arbitra- 
tion reduces  itself  to  the  effects  of  deceased  seamen.  Among  those  who 
were  at  first,  and  indeed  for  a  long  time,  most  sanguine  as  to  Baron  von 
Marschall's  co-operation  in  the  policy  of  obligatory  arbitration  was  the 
late  Mr.  W.  T.  Stead,  who,  at  The  Hague,  issued  a  daily  journal  hi 
French  giving  an  account  of  the  proceedings  of  the  Conference  and 
estimates  of  the  activities  of  the  different  delegates.  His  disappoint- 
ment at  the  close  of  the  Conference  was  so  great  that  he  published  a 
very  humorous  cartoon  representing  the  '  total  eclipse '  of  the  chief 
German  delegate,  whom  he  had  previously  represented  as  the  '  leading 
star '  hi  the  galaxy  of  diplomatists  assembled  at  The  Hague." 

•  The  present  writer  said  it  himself,  some  twenty  years  ago,  hi  a  book 
entitled  Patriotism  and  Science. 


184  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

the  man  of  to-day  and  the  man  of  only  two  or  three 
generations  ago  than  between  the  man  of  the  last  three 
centuries  and  the  man  of  three  thousand  years  before. 
But  the  normal  consequences  of  that  curious  evolution, 
which  Mr.  Norman  Angell  neatly  calls  the  "  law  of  accel- 
eration," have  been  retarded  during  our  own  time  by  the 
results  of  the  short-sighted  action  which  Germany,  with 
the  complicity  of  Europe,  committed  in  the  seizure  of 
Alsace-Lorraine. 

That  a  thinker  of  Mr.  Norman  Angell's  probity  should 
discuss  the  possibility  of  the  abolition  of  modern  arma- 
ments without  dealing  with  the  question  of  Alsace- 
Lorraine,  is  a  curious  oversight.  Mr.  Angell  undertakes 
to  prove  that  "  the  necessity  of  adopting  defensive 
measures  implies,  on  some  one's  part,  grounds  for  aggres- 
sion, and  that  this  motive  is  due  to  the  present  universal 
belief  in  the  economic  advantages  to  be  derived  from  a 
victorious  war."  Now  this  theory,  which  has  a  show  of 
axiomatic  clearness,  is  all  too  clear.  It  would  seem  so  to 
have  dazzled  its  inventor's  eyes  as  to  blind  him  to  the 
immediate  realities  of  contemporary  history.  It  is  true 
that  no  one  will  ever  wish  to  fight  his  neighbour  unless  he 
has  some  good  reason  for  doing  so.  But  among  all  the 
English-speaking  peoples  economic  motives  have,  perhaps, 
been  the  least  persuasive  motives  that  have  driven  great 
nations  to  war.  The  present  condition  of  modern 
Europe,  under  the  crushing  system  of  armaments,  is  in 
itself  the  miserable  consequence  of  a  war  waged  for  any 
and  every  other  motive  but  that  of  economic  advantage, 
a  war  which  was  at  the  time  a  mere  incident  in  the  vast 
national  movement  for  the  formation  of  a  United  Ger- 
many. Likewise,  most  of  the  military  activity  of  France 
within  the  last  hundred  years  has  been  prompted  by  an 
idealism  untinctured  by  economics.  This,  and  other 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     185 

similar  illustrations — such  as  the  Mobilization  of  the 
Balkan  States,  in  October  19121 — might,  it  would  be 
imagined,  be  merely  supererogatory  in  replying  to  Mr. 
Norman  Angell,  who,  in  his  less  doctrinaire  moments, 
is  quite  ready  to  acknowledge  the  potential  share  of 
other  than  merely  economic  factors  among  the  causes  of 
war.  All  that  need  be  pointed  out  is  the  hopelessness 
of  expecting  to  settle  the  problem  of  European  arma- 
ments without  first  removing  one  of  the  primary  causes  of 
those  armaments,  that  obstacle  in  the  path  of  "  pacifism  " 
known  as  Alsace-Lorraine.  That  question  is  an  integral 
part  of  the  whole  question  of  European  peace.  And  as 
Mr.  Norman  Angell's  book  has  been  translated  into  many 
languages,  and  has  attracted  wide  attention,  it  is  necessary 
to  insist  on  the  fact  that  it  is  the  work  of  a  clear  and 
logical  intelligence,  somewhat  surprisingly  indifferent  to 
certain  of  the  more  important  among  the  positive  factors 
with  which  a  statesman  has  to  deal.  If  Mr.  Norman  Angell 
had  said:  "  If  human  nature  were  logical,  and  if  nations 
were  governed  by  reason,  war  would  be  almost  impossible, 
because  war  is  usually  absurd ;  and  war  is  absurd  because 
it  rarely  brings  any  lasting  good,  and  because  it  is  ridicu- 

1  No  one  contests  that  economic  motives  help  to  explain  the  Balkan 
War  (cf.  pp.  289,  290,  339),  but  such  motives  are  insignificant  in  com- 
parison with  the  idealistic  "national"  aspirations  that  have  found 
their  sanction  at  Kirk-Kilisse.  A  more  detailed  analysis  would,  no 
doubt,  point  out,  however,  as  M.  Francis  Delaisi  has  shown  (vide,  "  Une 
Guerre  pour  un  Chemin  de  Fer,"  La  Grande  Revue,  July  10, 1913),  that, 
although  the  Balkan  War  was  undertaken  in  the  name  of  the  principle 
of  nationalities,  the  secret  treaty  that  denned  the  conditions  of  the  war 
(cf.  note,  p.  327)  was  an  utter  negation  of  this  principle.  In  fact,  while 
governments  uniformly  fight  for  interests,  the  motives  of  peoples  are 
idealistic.  "  Religion,  patrie,  foi,  honneur,  ce  sont  les  leviers  puissants 
a  1'aide  desquels  les  homines  d'Etat  meuvent  les  masses  .  .  .  mais  ces 
leviers  sont  aux  mains  d'hommes  d'affaires,  qui  exaltent  ou  apaisent  ces 
sentiments,  et  les  utilisent  au  gre  de  leurs  combinaisons  de  chemins  de 
fer  et  de  leurs  calculs  d' exportation."  (Delaisi:  article  cited.) 


186  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

lous  to  act  on  absurd  motives,"  everybody  would  un- 
doubtedly agree  with  him.  But,  unfortunately,  nations 
are  more  frequently  actuated  by  motives  that  are 
"  absurd  "  than  by  motives  that  are  rational;  and  it  is 
as  irrational  to  expect  to  rationalize  politics  as  it  is  to 
wish  to  rationalize  religion. 

It  was  to  lack  foresight,  and  hence  to  be  irrational,  for 
Germany  to  take  Alsace-Lorraine ;  but  it  would  be  no  less 
imprudent,  and  therefore  irrational,  for  French  leaders  of 
opinion  to  cultivate  in  the  mass  of  the  nation  the  belief 
that,  because  what  Mr.  Norman  Angell  says  is  partially 
true,  they  ought  to  subordinate  to  that  more  remote  ideal 
truth  a  certain  set  of  French  verities  which  are  of  the 
essence  of  their  integrity  as  a  nation.  There  are  French 
truths  and  there  are  British  truths,  and  there  are  truths 
that  obtain  on  the  slopes  of  the  Atlas — and  there  are 
abstract  truths.  Mr.  Norman  Angell's  truth,  in  spite  of 
its  specious  inductive  stability,  is  an  abstract  truth.  And, 
just  because  it  ignores  one  whole  set  of  facts — those 
growing  out  of  the  terms  of  the  Treaty  of  Frankfort,  and 
as  yet  unmodified  by  the  new  conditions  of  modern 
progress — it  is  a  truth  which,  if  it  were  accepted  by  the 
French,  would  reduce  them  to  the  state  of  the  Greeks 
after  the  sack  of  Corinth.  It  would  be  necessary  to  insist 
on  this  fact — since  the  French,  as  every  one  knows,  are  a 
people  peculiarly  amenable  to  the  seduction  of  clear 
thinking,  peculiarly  given  to  general  ideas  and  to  generous 
impulses,  and  peculiarly  exposed  to  the  ravages  which 
such  clear  and  generous  ideas,  when  they  are  too  clear,  are 
bound  to  cause, — if  one  could  not  confidently  count  on 
the  action  of  an  aggressive  Germany  to  maintain  a  sane 
tonicity  in  the  French  character.  It  ought  to  be  for  the 
French  a  point  of  "  national  honour,"  in  the  interests  of 
their  peculiar  form  of  civilization,  to  raise  relentlessly — 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     187 

and  even  barbarically — every  form  of  dyke  against  the 
inroads  of  that  tide  of  modern  progress  so  magnificently 
symbolized  by  the  industrial  activity  and  the  pervasive 
financial  expansion  of  Germany.1  It  ought  to  be  a  point 
of  "  national  honour  "  with  them  to  refuse  to  allow 
German  stocks  to  be  quoted  on  the  Paris  Bourse,  and  to 
maintain  their  credit  by  methods  which,  as  far  as  possible, 
will  prevent  them  from  feeling  the  impact  of  commercial 
crises — in  a  word,  to  go  back  to  the  soil.2  And  finally,  it 
ought  to  be  a  point  of  "national  honour  "  with  them  to 
gaze  steadily  into  the  East,  following  the  precept  of 
Gambetta  hi  his  St.  Quentin  speech:  "  II  faut  constam- 
ment  que  la  France  soit  penchee  sur  cette  oeuvre  de 
reparation.  .  .  .  Soyona  tres  reserves,  ne  pronon9ons 
jamais  une  parole  temeraire.  .  .  .  Soyons  gardiens  de 
notre  dignite  du  vaincu,  et  ne  parlons  jamais  de  Petranger ; 
mais  que  Ton  comprenne  que  nous  y  pensons  tou jours." 

II  faut  constamment  que  la  France  soit  penchee  sur  cette 
oeuvre  de  reparation.  There  have  been  long  periods  during 
the  last  twenty-five  years  when  France  seemed  to  have 
forgotten ;  when,  in  heeding  too  literally  the  recommenda- 
tion of  Gambetta,  "  Ne  parlons  jamais  de  1'etranger,"  she 
appeared  positively  to  have  ceased  to  follow  the  great 
tribune's  other  behest,  "  que  Ton  comprenne  que  nous  y 
pensons  tou  jours."  In  the  making  of  her  North  African 
Empire,  for  instance,  and  indeed  in  the  working  out  of  her 
entire  destiny  as  a  Colonial  power,  she  allowed  to  come 
into  being  an  influential  band  of  politicians,  some  of  whom 
might  perhaps  have  been  induced  in  1910  and  1911  to 

»  Cf .  p.  280  et  seq. 

2  Moral,  political,  sociological  reasons  ought  to  suffice  as  an  incentive 
to  the  French  legislator  for  favouring  agricultural  interests  and  for 
arresting  the  exodus  from  the  country  into  the  towns.  Reinforced  by 
the  economic  motives  arising  from  the  peculiar  conditions  of  the  French 
corn-market,  these  reasons  become  irrefutable. 


188  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

come  to  terms  with  Germany,  even  to  sacrifice  the 
Entente  Cordiale,  and  to  abandon  the  lost  provinces  to 
their  fate,  if  they  could  thereby  have  made  sure  of  obtain- 
ing from  Germany  the  promise  that,  so  far  as  that  Power 
was  concerned,  Morocco  should  henceforth  be  terre 
francaise.1  But  at  that  very  moment  the  mass  of  reflect- 
ing Frenchmen  had  their  gaze  ri vetted  on  the  Vosges. 
In  the  spring  of  1911,  only  a  few  weeks  before  Agadir, 
M.  Lavisse,  the  Academician,  Professor  of  History  at  the 
Sorbonne,  addressed  the  Alsace-Lorraine  students  as 
follows : — 

"  Mes  amis,  je  ne  veux  pas  dire  autre  chose  que  ce  que  je  dis.  Je  n'ai 
pas  d' arriere-pensee.  Je  ne  suis  pas  venu  apporter  ici  des  paroles  de 
haine;  il  y  a  longtemps  que  j'ai  ecrit:  '  Puisque  la  haine  est  aveugle,  ne 
la  prenons  pas  pour  guide.'  Encore  moins  je  me  donnerai  le  ridicule  de 
vous  annoncer  une  guerre  liberatrice.  La  Prance  est  pacifique ;  elle  ne 
fera  la  guerre  que  si  elle  y  est  contrainte.  Mais  considerez  1'etat  de  la 
politique  europeenne  et  mondiale,  les  ligues,  les  contre-ligues;  la  France 
est  surveillee  en  tous  ses  mouvements  par  1'Allemagne;  Allemagne  et 
France  sont  deux  armees  en  presence,  et  les  trompettes  et  clairons  des 
avant-gardes  sont  tenus  a  la  hauteur  des  levres.  Pour  retrouver  la 
liberte  de  ses  mouvements,  la  France  n'aurait  qu'a  dire  un  tout  petit  mot : 
*  J'ouUie  r  Ce  tout  petit  mot,  die  ne  le  dira  pas." 

The  Paris  Review,  Les  Marches  de  VEst,  which  is  the 
organ  of  French  writers  "  eager  to  protect  the  lucid  genius 
of  their  race  against  the  invasion  of  Germanism,"  has 
become  in  four  years  one  of  the  indispensable  reviews  pub- 
lished in  France.  Alsace-Lorraine  is  now  the  theme  of 
scores  of  volumes  which  go  rapidly  into  numerous  editions. 
Events  in  the  lost  provinces  are  followed  by  the  Paris 
Press  with  an  assiduity  which  would  surprise  the  readers 
of  that  Press  of  ten  years  ago.  Germany,  moreover, 
seems  to  be  exhausting  her  resources  in  furnishing  French 
journalists  with  the  most  attractive  matter  for  comment. 

1  Cf .  p.  280  et  seq. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     189 

When  the  Metz  Courts  are  not  engaged  in  prosecuting  the 
members  of  a  sporting  club  suspected  of  French  sympa- 
thies— and  prosecuting  them  so  blunderingly  that  the 
Deputy  for  Colmar,  M.  Blumenthal,  in  his  interpellation 
to  the  Government  at  the  Provincial  Committee  was  able 
to  say,  "  You  need  not  feel  surprise  if  the  Germanization 
of  this  region  has  been  retarded  by  ten  years  " — an  artist 
like  Zislin  is  cast  into  prison  for  harmless  if  ruthless 
caricature,  and  the  prosecuting  magistrate,  in  his  speech 
for  the  indictment,  is  obliged  to  acknowledge : — 

"  We  are  living  in  a  frontier  region  where  sympathies  for  France,  after 
forty  years  of  annexation,  are  still  a  living  reality;  we  are  passing 
through  a  period  more  agitated  even  than  that  of  Boulangism;  an 
ardent  nationalism  is  arising,  and  I  do  not  refer  to  that  nationalism 
summed  up  in  the  formula  'Alsace-Lorraine  aux  Alsaciens-Lorrains.' 
No,  I  refer  to  that  blue,  white  and  red  nationalism,  which  not  only  harks 
back  to  the  past,  but  is  cultivating  among  the  people  of  Alsace-Lorraine 
the  hope  of  a  better  future,  to  such  a  degree,  in  fact,  that  some  of  our 
Alsace-Lorraine  youths  regard  the  tricolour  as  their  own  flag."1 

Prussia,  in  a  word,  as  was  clearly  perceived  in  France 
even  in  1910,  can  no  longer,  save  by  the  most  drastic 
measures,  defend  the  German  cause  in  the  annexed 
territory.  The  claim  of  many  excellent  French  observers, 
from  M.  Maurice  Barres  to  M.  Georges  Ducrocq,  would  not 
seem  to  have  been  exaggerated  :  although  separated  from 
France,  Alsace  and  Lorraine  are  more  really  united  to  her 
hi  feeling  to-day  than  they  were  before  the  war.  The 

1  The  case  of  the  artist  Hansi  is  even  more  significant.  Incarcerated 
for  two  weeks  in  May  and  June,  1914,  on  the  charge  of  high-treason,  as 
the  author  of  a  somewhat  sentimental  but  charming  book,  M  on  Village, 
which  the  detached  observer  would  have  supposed  far  less  irritating  to 
Prussian  nerves  than  the  terrible  asperities  of  the  Munich  draughtsmen 
of  the  Lustige  Blaetter  and  the  Simplicissimus,  he  was  released  on  a 
30,000  francs  bail,  pending  his  trial  before  the  Leipzig  Superior  Court. 
That  court  finally  condemned  him,  in  July,  1914,  to  a  year's  imprison- 
ment. Hansi  passed  by  the  Schlucht  into  France,  where  he  was 
welcomed  with  open  arms. 


190  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Reichsland  has  become  what  M.  Barres  has  called  it,  La 
Terre  de  la  Resurrection.  The  new  hypocritical  solution 
offered  by  Germany  for  the  terrible  problem  put  by  the 
Treaty  of  Frankfort,  and  kept  open  by  German  incompe- 
tency  and  bungling,  will  be  found  to  be  utterly  inadequate. 
The  Constitution  will  solve  nothing,1  and  the  action  of  the 
Emperor  in  dissolving  the  Provincial  Committee  will  not 
have  facilitated  the  task  of  altering  the  mystical  status 
of  Alsace-Lorraine  as  the  Reichsland,  "Imperial  soil," 
which  is  the  keystone  of  German  Unity.  The  tension,  in 

1  This  prophecy  was  almost  instantly  fulfilled.  In  March  1914, 
Baron  de  Gamp,  Deputy  at  the  Reichstag,  spoke  as  follows  before  tho 
Congress  of  Independent  Conservatives: 

"  Je  desire  vous  rappeler  quel  service  1'empereur  vient  de  rendre  au 
pays  dans  la  question  d' Alsace-Lorraine.  Ce  fut  unc  lourde  faute 
politique  que  d'accorder  a  1' Alsace -Lorraine  une  Constitution.  Si  on 
desirait  a  toute  force  le  f aire,  il  f allait  du  moins  augmenter  en  meme 
temps  les  pouvoirs  du  gouvernement  alsacien-lorrain,  pour  lui  permettre 
de  lutter  centre  la  presse  f  ran§aise  (la  presse  f  rangaise,  c'est  pour  M.  de 
Gamp,  comme  pour  tous  les  Allemands,  la  presse  d'Alsace-Lorraine  qui 
reste  attachee  au  Souvenir  frangais). 

"  II  f  allait  aussifaire  dependre,  continue  M.  de  Gamp,  la  Constitution, 
des  lois  sur  la  presse.  Le  4  decembre,  le  Reichstag  et  le  gouvernement 
ignoraient  quel  triste  etat  d' esprit  regnait  dans  les  pays  annexes.  C'est 
le  proces  du  colonel  von  Reutter  qui  a  eclaire  la  nation.  Nous  avons 
appris  alors  les  nombreuses  attaques  que  la  population  civile  avait 
entreprises  contre  les  soldats,  le  manque  de  protection  de  la  part  de  la 
police,  les  exces  de  la  '  presse  frangaise.'  L'Allemagne  tout  entiere 
doit,  une  grande  reconnaissance  au  colonel  von  Reutter. 

"  Plus  tard,  nous  avons  su  que  les  plus  hauts  f  onctionnaires  violaient, 
dans  le  pays  annexe,  leurs  devoirs  envers  1'Allemagne.  Je  ne  veux  pas 
entrer  ici  dans  tous  les  details.  Alors,  la  nation  allemande  tout  entiere 
fut  prise  d' indignation  et  ce  cri  monta  unanime : '  Qu'on  nous  debarrasse 
d'un  pareil  gouvernement  alsacien-lorrain  !'  (Applaudissements  fre- 
n^tiques.) 

"  L'empereur  partagea  de  tels  sentiments.  Arme  d'un  balai  de  fer,  il 
nettoya  Strasbourg  et  il  mit  a  la  tete  de  V administration,  dans  les  pays 
annexes,  des  homines  qui  ont  la  ferine  volonte  de  gouverner  dans  le  sens  de  la 
tradition  prussienne,  avec  justice,  avec  le  souci  des  interets  materids  et 
moraux  des  pays  d'empire,  avec  la  ferine  vdonte  d'enfaire  ce  qu'ils  doivent 
ftre,  une  partie  de  notre  patrie  all 'emar.de." 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     191 

fact,  has  reached  such  a  pitch  that  it  is  doubtful  if  a 
scheme  of  frank  autonomy  could  now  settle  the  question 
of  Alsace-Lorraine.  In  his  admirable  pamphlet,  Le 
Cauchemar  de  VEurope,  M.  Albert  Gobat,  a  Swiss  Con- 
seiller  d'Etat,  returning  from  a  prolonged  visit  to  Alsace 
in  the  autumn  of  1910,  argues  eloquently  that  if  the 
Imperial  Government  would  only  decide  to  place  Alsace- 
Lorraine  on  the  same  footing  as  the  Grand  Duchy  of 
Baden,  or  as  the  free  towns  of  Hamburg  and  Lubeck 
(that  is  to  say,  grant  them  autonomy),  such  action,  by 
lifting  the  annexed  Provinces  to  the  dignity  of  a  nation, 
well  above  international  complications,  would  guarantee 
the  peace  of  Europe.  The  Constitution,  at  all  events,  will 
simply  maintain  the  annexed  Provinces  in  the  relation  of 
a  fief  to  a  sovereign  lord.  M.  Gobat's  proposal  is  the 
most  obvious  justice,  but  it  is  doubtful  if  those  who  know 
what  the  word  Reichsland  really  implies,  or  if  those  who 
are  best  acquainted  with  the  present  state  of  Europe,  will 
be  as  optimistic  as  he,  in  believing  that  even  the  incon- 
ceivable granting  of  autonomy  to  Alsace-Lorraine  would 
usher  in  the  era  of  European  peace.  An  autonomous 
Alsace-Lorraine  would  add  one  more  to  the  series  of  buffer 
States  situated  between  France  and  Germany;  but  the 
buffer  quality  of  all  these  States,  from  Switzerland  to 
Luxembourg  and  Belgium,  is  a  mere  diplomatic  fiction 
which  would  vanish  like  a  wisp  of  straw  in  the  event  of  a 
European  conflagration. 

At  the  present  moment  no  international  Treaty,  no 
diplomatic  instrument  or  convention  is  worth  the  paper 
on  which  it  is  written.  They  might  as  well  have  been 
formulated  on  paper  made  of  wood-pulp.  Three  or  four 
lunar  cycles,  as  every  one  knows,  suffice  to  destroy  most 
of  the  modern  paper  used  for  newspapers  and  books. 
But  all  the  treaties  in  the  world  will  be  a  dead-letter  even 


192  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

before  most  of  the  modern  productions  of  art  and  letters 
have  turned  to  dust.     The  only  treaties  that  stand  a 
chance  of  a  long  life  are  those  unwritten  Agreements 
which  are  based  on  common  interests.1    When,  in  order 
to  prevent  the  construction  of  the  Nicaragua  Canal,  and 
to  save  the  honour  of  France,  a  great  Frenchman,  M. 
Bunau-Varilla,  fomented  a  Revolution  at  Panama,  and 
thus  made  it  possible  for  Mr.  Roosevelt  to  seize  a  zone 
hi  Columbian  territory;2  when  Count  d'Aehrenthal  tore 
up  the  Treaty  of  Berlin  on  Bosnian  soil,  and  the  pieces 
were  finally  burned  to  ashes  in  bonfires  lit  by  the  Balkan 
League ;  when  the  Germans,  indifferent  to  the  stipulations 
of  the  Act  of  Algeciras,  and  their  agreement  of  desinteres- 
sement  with  France  of  1909,  sent  a  gun-boat  to  Agadir, 
the  world  beheld  certain  characteristic  instances  of  that 
prehistoric  principle,  the  spoils-policy,  which  the  medita- 
tions of  the  international  jurists  have  as  yet  done  nothing 
to  render  obsolete.     The  principle  dates  from  the  Stone- 
Age.    It  seems  new  only  because,  owing  to  the  changed 
social  conditions,  its  application  in  the  twentieth  century, 
A.D.,  is  an  altogether  different  problem  from  the  applica- 
tion in  B.C.  20000,  when  there  were  few  railways,  tele- 
graphs, steamboats,  newspapers  or  crossed  cheques.    The 
prehistoric  spoils-policy  of  the  Cave-Dweller  was  realized 
by  woodland  craft,  by  bludgeon,  or  by  a  swift-speeding 
flint.     The  same  object,  the  same  principle,  govern  col- 
lective human  nature  to-day  ;3  but,  because  in  certain 

1  See  note  1,  p.  302. 

2  See   Panama :   The   Creation,   Destruction  and   Resurrection,   by 
Philippe  Bunau-Varilla.     (Constable  and  Co.,  1913.) 

3  A  common-sense  statement  of  the  facts  as  they  are  at  the  beginning 
of  the  twentieth  century  may  be  found  in  the  following  passage  by  Mr. 
Roosevelt,  from  his  article  "  In  Chili,"  published  in  The  Outlook  of 
April  25, 1914 :  "  I  very  earnestly  believe  in  peace.     I  abhor  unjust  war; 
I  abhor  and  despise  all  men  who  lightly  or  wantonly  do  deeds  that 
jeopardize  peace.     I  believe  that  ways  can  be  found  which  gradually, 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     193 

other  respects  to-day  is  different  from  yesterday,  the  old 
principle  seems  to  be  tending  to  make  diplomacy  a  branch 

as  nations  grow  more  civilized,  more  on  an  equality  of  good  conduct 
and  right  living,  will  permit  of  the  substitution  of  other  methods  than 
those  of  war  for  the  settlement  of  international  disputes.  But  in  the 
international  body  politic,  as  in  every  other  body,  natural  or  artificial, 
it  is  as  foolish  to  attempt  to  draw  into  existence  a  function  before  there 
is  an  organ  through  which  it  can  act  as  to  create  an  organ  before  the 
function  itself  can  be  exercised.  The  belief  that  signing  names  to  a  bit 
of  paper,  and  calling  it  a  treaty,  in  itself  abolishes  the  facts  of  life  is  so 
foolish  as  hardly  to  be  even  pathetic.  By  treaty  Korea  is  now  an 
independent  power,  and  North  Schleswig  part  of  Denmark.  Are  they 
such  in  fact  ?  Does  any  body  of  peace  people  hope  to  make  them  such  ? 
If  arbitral  courts  had  existed  in  the  days  of  our  grandfathers, with  the 
powers  which  the  less  wise  among  their  grandsons  fondly  imagine  ought 
to  be  given  them,  California  and  Colorado  would  now  be  parts  of  Mexico, 
enjoying  whatever  blessings  complete  absence  from  foreign  war  has 
secured  that  country  during  the  last  three  years.  As  for  how  much  a 
concert  of  the  powers  to  enforce  neutrality  or  right  amounts  to  let 
Adrianople  bear  witness.  At  this  moment  Adrianople  is  Turkish  simply 
because  the  solemn  declarations  of  all  the  great  powers  of  Europe 
combined  mean  literally  nothing  in  the  face  of  even  a  feeble  antagonist 
who  is  resolute.  Probably  of  all  ingenious  ways  for  securing  the 
certainty  of  mischief,  the  most  unerringly  efficient  is  that  of  inter- 
national agreement  for  the  neutralization  of  a  land  under  circumstances 
like  those  which  well-meaning  but  weak-minded  enthusiasts  have 
thought  would  warrant  the  application  of  the  doctrine  to  the  Philip- 
pines. As  yet  the  great  free  nations  of  the  world,  which,  however 
stumblingly,  do  really  strive  for  justice,  would  inevitably  suffer  the  fate 
of  China  if  they  imitated  the  attitude  of  military  impotence  which 
China  is  herself  at  last  realizing  that  it  is  vital  for  her  to  abandon. 

In  particular  we  should  face  the  fact  that  America  would  unquestion- 
ably be  the  ground  for  the  expansion  of  the  overcrowded  powers  of 
Europe  and  Asia  if  it  were  not  for  the  potential  military  strength  of  the 
United  States,  and — I  believe  and  hope  I  may  add — were  it  not  also  for 
the  potential  military  strength  of  such  South  American  nations  as 
Brazil,  the  Argentine,  and  Chile.  I  also  hope  that  in  the  end  we  shall 
be  able  to  include  in  this  list  many  other  American  nations  as  rapidly 
as  they  acquire  the  material  prosperity  and  the  moral  solidity  and 
self-restraint  without  which  well-being  cannot  exist.  The  peace  of 
righteousness  is  a  noble  ideal,  and  as  yet  it  can  be  obtained  in  the  world 
at  large  only  if  the  righteous  are  able  to  defend  their  rights.  The  peace 
that  might  come  temporarily  as  the  result  of  impotence  and  weakness, 

o 


194 

of  physico-chemistry.  It  has  been  neatly  defined,  by 
M.  Victor  Berard,  as  Le  Droit  de  Voisinage,  which  is 
French  for  "  geographic  gravitation."  It  is  the  human, 
the  sociological,  form  of  one  of  these  aspects  of  the 
physical  law  of  capillary  attraction.  The  principle  of 
"  neighbourhood  rights  " — the  right  which  a  Power  as- 
sumes to  annex  or  administer  the  States  and  Dependencies 
of  a  neighbour  unable  to  defend  itself,  or  to  establish 
justice  within  its  borders — accounts  for  the  shiftings  in 
international  relations,  for  the  kaleidoscopic  combinations 
that  have  taken  place  during  the  last  ten  years,  from 
Morocco  by  way  of  Persia  to  Manchuria,  and — who 
knows  ? — perhaps  round  the  world  again  to  Mexico  and 
Central  America;  and  if  in  the  Far  East  Mr.  Knox  and 
President  Taft  met  in  1910  with  a  comic  rebuff,  it  was 
because  they  had  not  taken  into  adequate  consideration 
the  working  of  this  positive  and  scientific  basis  of  modern 
international  politics.  The  successive  treaties  signed  by 
the  Powers  have  been  merely  a  provisional  record  up-to- 
date  of  the  stage  reached  in  these  chemico-political  com- 
binations. One  of  the  prettiest  cases  under  this  law  is, 
of  course,  the  process  of  "  pacific  penetration  "  of  Morocco 
by  France.  But  an  even  more  elegant  demonstration  was 
the  Anglo-Russian  Agreement  as  to  Persia,  with  its 
corollary — that  portion  of  the  mysterious  negotiations  of 
Potsdam  bearing  on  the  Baghdad  concession.1 

of  the  soft  shirking  of  effort  and  the  foolish  belief  that  danger  can  be 
avoided  by  saying  that  it  does  not  exist,  would  last  for  but  a  moment 
and  would  then  be  paid  for  by  world-wide  bloodshed  and  disaster.  To 
divorce  might  from  right  is  an  uncommonly  foolish  procedure  from  the 
standpoint  of  right.  The  free  and  peace-loving  nations,  in  the  present 
state  of  the  world's  progress,  can  preserve  the  blessings  of  peace  and 
righteousness  only  as  long  as  they  are  both  able  and  willing,  if  necesssity 
should  demand  it,  to  use  their  potential  strength  against  wrong-doers." 
1  See  p.  306,  note  1. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     195 

Now  the  French,  in  their  quick  clear  way,  have  been 
intelligent  enough  to  apply  this  principle  to  the  im- 
mediate future.  This  fact  need  surprise  only  those  who 
still  forget  that  France  has  had  to  evolve  a  national  in- 
tegrity in  mid-Europe  by  slow  and  secular  processes, 
which  consisted  in  constructing  for  herself  on  every  side 
a  carapace  impervious  to  outside  influences.  The  French 
have  had  to  fight  their  way  to  national  unity  against  the 
inroads  on  their  frontiers  of  the  Anglo-Norman  and  the 
German.  At  no  stage  of  their  national  history  have  they 
been  without  an  Alsace-Lorraine  problem  in  one  form  or 
another — now  in  the  South-West,  now  hi  the  North,  or 
now  doubly,  triply,  in  the  East,  where  the  line  of  the 
Vosges,  of  the  Jura,  and  of  the  Savoy  Alps  has  always 
marked  the  central  axis  of  a  border  region  never  wholly 
theirs,  nor  yet  ever  wholly  that  of  the  "barbarians." 
"  National  honour,"  in  these  conditions,  is  merely  the 
name  for  a  set  of  unconscious  reactions  of  self-preserva- 
tion. It  is  not  at  all,  in  its  essence,  the  hollow,  but 
clarion-tongued,  cocardier  screech  in  praise  of  La  Gloire 
which  Englishmen  and  Germans  fancy  it  to  be,  and 
which  no  doubt  at  times,  for  aesthetic  ends,  it  can  easily 
and  provisionally  become.  From  the  point  of  view  of 
the  making  of  the  nation,  the  evolution  of  French  history 
has  been  an  effort  to  moderate  the  action  of  the  natural 
law  of  "  neighbourhood  rights  "  applied  successfully  and 
doggedly  by  England,  and  clumsily,  though  with  a  show 
of  scientific,  even  philosophic,  method  by  Germany.  And 
the  phrase  "  moderate  the  action,"  seems  exact,  because 
the  natural  and  justifiable  limits  of  French  European  ex- 
pansion have  never  suffered  any  change  in  the  Gallic 
mind  since  they  were  fixed  by  the  Romans,  who  had 
worked  with  the  geography  of  Strabo  under  their  eyes. 

It  has  thus,  as  it  were,  become  a  second  nature  for 


196  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

France  to  possess  a  European  sense;  and  this  European 
sense  has  never  suffered  her,  for  any  protracted  period, 
to  be  the  dupe  of  even  her  most  civilized  aspiration,  the 
dream  of  one  day  inhabiting  a  Europe  based  on  Justice 
and  Right.  An  almost  singular  respect  for  the  written 
word  in  Treaties  has  been,  no  doubt,  part  of  the  French- 
man's noble  Latin  inheritance,  but  his  eyes  have  never 
been  dimmed,  to  the  presence,  just  over  his  buffer-State 
border,  of  a  Holland  which — whatever  the  terms  of  the 
Treaty  of  London  of  1839,  guaranteeing  Belgian  inde- 
pendence and  neutrality,  and  of  the  clauses  of  the  Treaty 
of  Vienna  proclaiming  the  free  navigation  of  the  Escaut 
— is  destined  one  day  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  Germany, 
unless  its  integrity  be  maintained  by  the  common  action 
of  France  and  England.  It  did  not  need  the  Dutch  pro- 
posal to  fortify  Flushing  to  justify,  in  the  eyes  of  French 
statesmen,  the  vigilance  with  which  they  had  been  ob- 
serving, since  the  advent  of  the  Prince  Consort,  the  ex- 
tension of  German  influence  in  the  Low  Countries.  They 
were  well  aware  in  1911  that  the  Belgian  and  British 
appeals  to  International  Law  to  refute  the  parallel 
juridical  arguments  of  Holland,  were  of  merely  academic 
interest  save  in  so  far  as  public  discussion  arrested  Hol- 
land in  her  German  policy,  and  gave  her  time  to  reflect 
on  the  international  bearings  of  her  proposed  action.  In 
1910  and  1911  nothing  more  clearly  showed  the  inter- 
national authority  of  France  than  the  facts  that,  un- 
assisted by  England,  her  Foreign  Minister  should  have 
declared  openly  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  his  readiness 
to  causer  with  the  signatories  of  the  Treaty  of  1839,  and 
that,  although  Germany  retorted  with  tit-for-tat  haste, 
that  she  had  no  intention  of  entering  into  any  conversa- 
tion on  the  subject,  the  Dutch  Government  after  all 
prudently  took  the  French  hint,  and  began  to  tack  away 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     197 

diplomatically  from  the  shallows  on  which  her  heavy 
galleons  seemed  about  to  run  aground.  Yet  the  Flushing 
Fortification  Bill  came  up  again  in  1912  before  the  Dutch 
Chamber,  and  this  time  neither  France  nor  England  made 
the  slightest  sign  that  they  had  evolved  a  common  policy 
for  the  defence  of  Belgian  neutrality.1  France,  it  should 
be  repeated,  cannot  act  alone.  The  Entente  Cordiale 
must  be  converted  into  a  close  Dual  Alliance,  based  on 
common  interests,  in  order  to  forestall  before  the  close 
of  the  next  decade — when  Germany  will  have  her  full 
quota  of  "  Dreadnoughts  "  in  the  North  Sea — the  possi- 
bility of  the  principle  of  geographical  gravitation  being 
applied  to  Holland  as  Bismarck  applied  it  to  Denmark.2 
Where  are  the  "  neighbourhood  rights  "  of  Germany  more 
neatly  applicable  than  to  the  regions  about  the  Hague 
and  Rotterdam  ?  Notwithstanding  the  immediate  re- 
sults of  the  victories  of  the  Balkan  League  in  1912,  every 

1  The  Belgian  Army  Bill  laid  before  the  Chamber  on  December  5, 
1912,  proposing  to  raise  the  mobilizable  total  of  that  country's  armed 
strength  to  340,000  men,  marked  the  determination  of  Belgium  to 
guarantee,  unaided,  respect  for  her  neutrality,  in  case  of  a  war  between 
France  and  Germany,  or  a  war  in  which  France  and  Germany  are 
arrayed  in  opposite  camps.  These  precautions  do  not,  however,  pre- 
clude the  necessity  for  France  and  England  to  evolve  a  common  policy 
for  the  maintenance  of  the  validity  of  the  treaties  of  1839.  In  Feb- 
ruary, 1913,  Baron  de  Broqueville,  the  Belgian  Prime  Minister  and 
Minister  of  War,  stated  to  a  Committee  of  the  Belgian  Chamber  that 
the  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs  and  he  himself  were  "  on  a  volcano." 
The  Bill,  passed  by  the  Chamber  on  May  30,  became  law  on  June  19. 
Every  Belgian  will  be  called  to  the  colours  in  his  twentieth  year. 
See  note  2,  p.  240. 

8  Schleswig  is  not  yet  an  integral  part  of  the  German  Empire,  any 
more  than  are  Alsace  and  Lorraine.  Herr  von  Bethmann-Hollweg, 
speaking  in  the  Reichstag  of  Dano-German  relations  recently,  referred 
to  the  "  increasing  agitation  against  Germanism  in  Northern  Schleswig, 
and  the  aggravation  of  national  antagonism."  He  added:  "The 
reversion  of  Southern  Jutland  to  Denmark  remains  a  dream,  and  will 
never  be  a  reality." 


198  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

one  who  knows  the  state  of  Europe  still  recalls  the  per- 
tinent question  put  by  the  author  of  Le  Choix  de  Londres 
(Revue  de  Paris,  April  15,  1911):  "When  the  Russians 
lay  hands  on,  or  take  control  of,  Stamboul,  when  the 
Austrians  follow  suit  at  Salonica,  and  the  Italians  at 
Valona,  why  should  not  the  German  Customs  Officer  or 
Admiral  enter  Rotterdam  ?" 

At  all  events,  reasons  of  this  kind,  vividly  held  before 
the  French  intelligence,  kept  France,  in  1910  and  1911, 
from  falling  into  the  state  of  beatific  apathy  which  at 
that  period  characterized  England's  attitude  towards  the 
problems  of  world-politics.  The  French  felt,  no  doubt, 
as  Bishop  Butler  said  in  his  Sermons  at  the  Rolls,  that 
things  will  be  as  they  will  be  ;  but  it  never  occurred  to 
them  that  this  fact  was  a  reason  for  not  maintaining  con- 
stant vigilance,  or  for  not  making  a  strenuous  effort  to 
avoid  becoming  the  dupe  of  "  things."1 


VI 

On  the  first  of  July  1911  the  First- Secretary  of  the 
German  Embassy  in  Paris  called  on  M.  de  Selves,  the 
French  Foreign  Minister,  to  inform  him  of  Germany's 
decision  to  send  an  armed  vessel  to  the  Moroccan  port 
of  Agadir. 

This  mysterious  coup  d* Agadir,  information  of  which 
was  vouchsafed  at  the  same  moment  to  all  the  other 
European  Governments,  surprised  and  startled  the  world. 

1  "  No  people  can  maintain  an  effective  peace  policy  without  being 
always  ready  for  war.  A  diminished  France,  a  France  exposed,  by 
its  own  fault,  to  taunts  or  humiliations,  would  no  longer  be  France. 
.  .  .  Our  words  of  peace  and  humanity  will  be  all  the  more  likely  to 
be  heeded,  if  we  are  known  to  be  more  determined  and  better  armed.'' 
— President  Poincare's  Message  to  the  French  Parliament,  February  20, 
1913  Cf.  note,  p.  1C5,  and  note  1,  p.  295. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     199 

A  special  and  plausible  justification  of  Germany's  con- 
duct, her  not  unnatural  irritation  at  France's  procrastina- 
tion and  apparent  ill-will  in  the  application  of  the  Franco- 
German  Agreement  of  1909,  was  utterly  unsuspected  at 
the  time,  not  only  by  the  general  public  on  the  Continent 
and  in  England,  but  even  by  well-informed  members  of 
the  French  Parliament.  The  Agreement  of  1909  had 
rejoiced  Europe.  It  seemed  to  be  an  earnest  of  Ger- 
many's honest  intention  to  cease  using  the  Moroccan 
question  as  an  instrument  of  political  and  diplomatic 
pressure  on  France.  All  that  the  public  opinion  of  the 
world  appeared  clearly  to  perceive  in  this  Agreement  was 
that  Germany  had  at  last  recognized  the  predominance 
in  Morocco  of  French  political  rights.  The  fact  that 
France,  in  another  clause  of  the  Agreement,  had  solemnly 
promised  to  share  with  Germany  the  golden  apples  of  the 
Hesperides,  was  generally  overlooked.  Europe  was  ill 
prepared,  therefore,  to  divine  that  when  Germany  sud- 
denly dispatched  a  gun-boat  to  an  Atlantic  port  within 
reach  of  the  Hesperidean  Gardens  it  was  because  France 
for  two  years  had  been  submitting  her  partner  in  the 
Agreement  of  1909  to  the  tortures  of  Tantalus,  by  alter- 
nately offering,  and  juggling  out  of  sight,  that  and  other 
coveted  fruit.  These  operations  had  gone  on  behind  the 
scenes,  and  not  a  dozen  men  in  Europe,  outside  of  the 
official  world  of  the  Quai  d'Orsay  and  the  Wilhelmstrasse, 
were  aware  that  the  apparent  bolt  from  the  blue  was  an 
act  for  which  a  rational  pretext  could  be  adduced.1 

In  deciding  on  so  sensational  a  method  for  the  solution 
of  a  strained  diplomatic  situation,  Germany  had  miscal- 
culated the  nature  of  the  political  forces,  and  of  the  inter- 
national factors,  then  existing  in  Europe.  Relentlessly 
bent  on  the  realization  of  her  fixed  idea,  destruction  of 
1  See  p.  281  et  seq. 


200  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

the  Entente  between  France  and  England,  she  had 
counted  on  achieving  that  object  surreptitiously  during 
the  working  out  of  the  ingenious  partnership  concluded 
between  herself  and  France  by  the  Agreement  of  1909. 
When  that  dream  was  blasted,  she  revived  her  other  more 
familiar  policy,  the  policy  of  intimidation.  With  the 
hammer  of  Thor  she  brought  down  a  prodigious  whack 
on  the  table  at  which  she  and  her  new  French  friends 
had  been  talking  business  for  some  eighteen  months. 
Convinced  that  Great  Britain  was  incurably  pacific,  and 
that  France  was  hurtling  to  the  dogs;  mistaking  the 
obvious  predicament  of  England,  and  the  unrest  in 
France,  for  positive  signs  of  a  disintegration  that  was 
bound  to  paralyse  the  common  action  of  those  two 
Powers,  Germany  concluded  that  the  moment  for  aggres- 
sive action  was  at  hand.  Ignorant  of  the  profound 
transformations  of  the  French  soul  during  the  months 
following  the  fall  of  M.  Delcasse  and  the  Casablanca 
incident,  and  deceived  by  the  "  humanitarianism  "  of 
England's  rulers,  and  the  laisser-aller  of  her  people,  Ger- 
many took  a  hasty  resultant  of  the  international  forces 
visible  to  the  naked  eye,  and  neglected  all  those  subtler 
elements  of  her  problem  which  less  official,  less  responsible 
observers  had  detected  and  publicly  noted. 

Moreover,  she  had  not  only  to  consider  her  relations 
with  the  powers  of  the  Triple  Entente;  but  to  maintain 
her  hegemony  within  the  narrower  limits  of  her  own 
political  system,  the  Triple  Alliance.  For  the  last  three 
or  four  years  it  had  seemed  as  if  German  leadership 
were  being  contested  by  Austria-Hungary.  When  Count 
Aehrenthal  made  up  his  mind  to  regularize  the  status  of 
Bosnia-Herzegovina,  the  Austro-Hungarian  Minister  had 
been  less  dazzled  by  the  apparition  at  his  side  of  his 
German  ally  in  shining  armour,  than  William  II  might 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    201 

have  hoped.  The  "  brilliant  second  "  had  shown  him- 
self a  possible  first  if  the  allies  should  be  called  upon  to 
run  many  more  races  together.  It  was  true  that  the 
authority  of  the  Triple  Alliance  had  been  enhanced  in 
Europe  by  the  failure  of  the  Triple  Entente  to  force 
Austria-Hungary  to  a  Conference  intended  virtually  as  a 
High  Court  to  the  bar  of  which  Count  d'Aehrenthal  was 
to  be  summoned.  But  the  watchful  knew  that  Germany 
knew  that  Austria-Hungary  knew  that  if  the  scheme  of 
a  High  Court  had  failed  it  was  owing  less  to  Germany's 
support  of  her  ally  than  to  the  lack  of  a  common  policy 
between  France,  England,  and  Russia,  and  most  of  all  to 
the  Quai  d'Orsay's  natural  hesitation  to  take  any  step 
that  might  alienate  the  sympathy  of  Austria-Hungary. 
That  Power  had  beautifully  backed  France  at  Algeciras, 
and  the  growth  of  her  authority,  within  reasonable  limits, 
could  not  but  be  to  the  advantage  of  the  French  policy 
for  the  maintenance  of  a  perfectly  balanced  Europe.  In 
short,  while — what  with  Bosnia-Herzegovina,  and  Pots- 
dam, and  Anglo-Franco-Russian  ataxy — the  Triple  Alli- 
ance seemed  to  be  steadily  humiliating  the  Triple  Entente, 
Germany's  special  diplomatic  position,  relatively  to  that 
of  Austria-Hungary,  was  far  less  satisfactory  than  it 
appeared  superficially  to  be.  Some  magnificent  stroke 
of  policy  was  really,  as  the  French  say,  "  indicated." 
Hot  from  the  secret  disappointment  of  her  discussions 
with  France  for  the  elaboration  of  a  Moroccan  condo- 
minium, Germany  devised  the  Coup  (TAgadir  ;  and  in 
sending  the  Panther  to  an  Atlantic  port  of  Morocco,  she 
counted  on  France's  being  frightened  out  of  her  wits  and 
on  England's  refusal  even  to  notice  what  she  had  done. 
She  counted,  perhaps,  above  all  on  England's  blindness, 
and  even  on  her  incapacity  to  intervene.  That  Germany 
should  have  blundered  so  prodigiously  implies,  after  all, 


202  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

that  British  things  were  in  a  perilous  condition.  And 
that  was  indeed  the  case  ! 

England  had  reached  a  crisis  due  to  a  partial  and 
startling  breakdown  in  that  very  machinery  of  repre- 
sentative parliamentary  government  which  she  herself 
had  patented.1 

It  is  a  radical  defect  of  parliamentary  government  that 
such  government  is  committed  to  stop-gap  initiatives,  a 
process  which  is  the  negation  of  positive  governmental 
efficiency.  The  foresight  that  is  an  essential  charac- 
teristic of  a  national  policy — the  foresight  which  a  Mon- 
archy like  that  of  Germany,  where  the  Emperor  and 
Chancellor  are  independent  of  the  Reichstag,  or  a  Consular 
Republic  like  that  of  the  United  States,  where  the  Presi- 
dent is  largely  responsible,  can  readily  exercise — such  a 
foresight  tends  to  become  impossible  in  parliamentary 
regimes,  like  those  of  France  and  England,  where  virtually 
single  Chambers,  dependent  on  the  masses,  readily 
sacrifice  national  to  local  interests,  and  intimidate  the 
Government  or  Cabinet  by  the  constant  menace  of  with- 
drawing their  support.  Yet  without  prevision  a  State  is 
doomed.  Under  a  parliamentary  regime  national  in- 
terests wait  on  the  good  pleasure  of  the  average  man  (or 
on  gelatinous  coagulations  of  the  average  man),  whose 
sole  ambition  to-day,  as  in  the  Roman  epoch  of  "  bread 
and  circuses,"  is  to  satisfy  immediate  demagogic  claims, 
and  the  limit  of  whose  vision  is,  at  the  most,  the  horizon 
of  his  parish.  Thus,  England  finds  herself  to-day  con- 

1  "  Well!  but  where  is  the  British  Constitution  to-day  ?  What  has 
it  become  ?  It  is  as  battered  and  unserviceable  as  a  wooden  battle- 
ship. The  Constitution  is  a  venerable  relic  that  might  be  put  in  the 
British  Museum,  or  into  the  new  Stafford  House.  .  .  .  We  are  to-day 
in  a  revolutionary  atmosphere,  and  we  must  not  shrink  from  revolu- 
tionary expedients — if  they  will  save  us  as  a  great  nation." — Frederic 
Harrison,  letter  to  The  Times,  March  27,  1914. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    203 

fronted  with  a  life-and- death  problem  of  maintenance, 
not  merely  of  her  "prestige,"  but  of  her  national 
security  (though  her  prestige  has  been  for  several  genera- 
tions the  chief  guarantee  of  her  security),  owing  largely 
to  the  fact  that  when  the  German  Emperor  declared  that 
"  Germany's  future  was  on  the  water,"  the  British  Minis- 
try were  prevented  by  the  parliamentary  system  of 
government  from  assuming  certain  responsibilities  which, 
had  they  been  untrammelled  by  humanitarian  "  little 
Englanders,"  they  would  have  looked  unhesitatingly  in 
the  face.  Again,  France  has  lost  a  vast  portion  of  the 
Congo  because  a  meddlesome  Socialist  opposition  regu- 
larly scared  her  wisest  statesmen  into  inactivity.  Be- 
lated action  is  an  inevitable  characteristic  of  public  policy 
under  a  parliamentary  regime;  and  it  is  rare  that,  given 
the  nature  and  the  speed  of  world-evolution  in  our  time, 
belated  action  is  not  futile  action.  The  coup  d'eple 
dans  I'eau  of  the  French  proverb  is  the  most  accurate 
symbol  of  the  eloquent,  but  aimless,  gestures  of  Govern- 
ments that  have  to  give  chronic  account  of  their  deeds 
to  parliamentary  assemblies.  The  tide  that  Shakespeare 
noted  in  the  affairs  of  men  cannot  be  taken  at  the  flood 
when  five  hundred  "  citizens  "  are  squabbling  as  to  the 
boats  to  be  selected  for  the  voyage;  as  to  whether  the 
crew  is  to  be  syndicalist  or  jaune,  native-born  or  "  sarra- 
sin  ";  or  as  to  the  reading  of  the  sextant  at  the  moment 
when  the  watch  is  taking  an  observation.  What  the 
five  hundred  will  eventually  do  is  to  force  their  officers 
to  embark  on  a  cranky  craft  without  a  sail,  exposed  to 
the  mercy  of  the  most  accessible  current  of  the  moment, 
in  the  puerile  hope  that  all  the  winds  will  be  favourable 
arxd  that  the  current  will  after  all  set  in  the  nick  of  time 
in  the  right  direction. 

It  is  obvious  that  when,  as  to-day,  States  are  busy  with 


204  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

problems  of  social  betterment,  occupied,  that  is,  in  the 
practical  realization  of  the  modern  ideal  of  social  solid- 
arity by  the  framing  of  demagogic  measures  partially 
inspired  by  the  desire  to  secure  votes,1  a  considerable 
proportion  of  the  public  fortune  is  sure  to  be  diverted 
from  the  channels  through  which  it  might  be  made  to 
fill  a  moat  of  defence  about  the  entire  nation  and  dis- 
tributed into  an  inner  network  of  canals  for  the  alleged 
irrigation  of  the  national  soil.  The  budgets  of  modern 
States,  in  spite  of  the  colossal  expenditure  for  national 
defence,  tend  constantly  to  swell  their  items  of  social 
legislation,  and  such  provisions  as  old-age  pensions, 
working  men's  insurance,  subsidies  to  labour  organiza- 
tions, the  nationalization  of  railways,  are  becoming  char- 
acteristic methods  for  the  spending  of  public  money, 
while  at  the  same  time  they  are  inevitable  obstacles  to 
the  construction  of  dreadnoughts,  the  equipping  of  air- 
fleets,  and  the  formation  of  army  corps.  In  other  words, 
the  clamour  of  the  populace,  or  the  tumult  of  the  mob, 
armed  by  the  humanitarianism  of  our  special  form  of 
Christian  civilization,  possesses,  in  the  devices  of  universal 
suffrage  and  parliamentary  government,  sure  instruments 
for  the  immediate  and  frequently  selfish  utilization  of 
the  wealth  of  the  community,  and  for  the  satisfaction  of 
party  interests  and  class  appetites  in  injudicious  and  often 
anti-national  ways. 

England  has  been,  for  the  last  few  years,  a  very  beauti- 
ful instance  of  these  truths.2    The  accession  to  power  of 

1  The  device  is  classic,  for  the  surenchdre  of  the  French  deputy  is 
only  the  modern  form  of  the  Roman  panem  et  circenses. 

2  France  as  well.    Cf.  note  1,  p.  165.     M.  Messimy,  the  Minister  of 
War  in  the  Viviani  Cabinet  of  1914,  was  in  1906  reporter  of  the  War 
Estimates  at  the  French  Chamber.     In  his  report  he  said:  "  Comme 
lea  nations  liberates,  ses  voisines  et  amies,  la  France  a  ou  combien 
I'accroissement  indefini  des  depenses  militaires  rendait  difficile  le  noble 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    205 

an  humanitarian  doctrinaire  liberalism,  with  radicalistic 
roots  and  demagogic  leanings,  the  surrender  of  England's 
destinies  to  a  Cabinet  dominated  by  public  men  mystic- 
ally inflamed  with  a  "  holy  "  passion  for  the  improvement 
of  the  masses,  and  either  ignorant  or  unmindful  both  of 
the  principles  of  State-craft  and  of  the  conditions  of 
British  prestige,  provided  an  excellent  object-lesson  of 
the  unadaptability  to  a  self-respecting  democratic  so- 
ciety of  the  purely  representative  form  of  government. 
One  of  the  colleagues  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George  and  Mr. 
Asquith,  Lord  Morley,  has  perfectly  described  the 


ide"al  de  civilisation  et  de  progres  qu'elle  poursuit.  ...  Si  Ton  ne 
peut  trouver  d'autres  ressources  pour  remedier  a  la  misere,  a  la  pauv- 
rete  et  a  1' ignorance  qui  sont  la  cause  de  la  perte  de  tant  de  milliers 
de  vies,  il  faut  sans  crainte  et  sans  hesiter,  prelever  quelques  dizaines 
de  millions  par  an  sur  les  budgets  de  guerre  pour  les  consacrer  aux 
oeuvres  de  preservation  contre  la  maladie  et  la  mort,  sur  les  budgets 
de  mort  pour  les  dormer  aux  budgets  de  vie."  How  systematically — 
"injudiciously  and  often  anti-nationally " — the  French  Chamber  has 
applied  these  demagogic  maxims  is  shown  by  the  following  facts: 
When  General  Andre  was  Minister  of  War  from  1902  to  1905,  M.  Combes 
being  Prime  Minister,  the  War  Office  Administration  demanded 
262,000,000  francs.  The  Minister  proposed  166,000,000.  The  Cham- 
ber voted  only  134,000,000  !  When  General  Picquart  was  at  the  War 
Office,  from  1908-1910,  M.  Clemenceau  being  Prime  Minister,  and 
M.  Caillaux  Minister  of  Finance,  the  War  Office  Administration  de- 
manded 267,000,000,  the  Minister  proposed  216,  and  the  Chamber 
voted  214  !  What  was  the  result  ?  Agadir.  After  1912,  the  succes- 
sive Ministers  of  War,  MM.  Messimy,  Millerand  and  Etienne,  co-operat- 
ing with  Ministers  of  Finance  less  professional  and  of  a  less  demagogic 
temper  than  M.  Caillaux,  diminished  by  only  four  millions  the  sum 
demanded  by  the  War  Office  Administration,  389,000,000,  for  the 
defence  of  France.  In  1913,  the  Briand  Cabinet  was  obliged  to  demand 
of  the  Chambers  extra  war-credits  amounting  to  420,000,000,  in  order 
to  continue  the  task  of  remedying  the  evil  effects  of  the  principle  so 
complacently  applied  by  the  doctrinaire  Socialist-Radicals  in  office. 
Germany  is  spared  as  yet  these  absurd  consequences  of  Representative 
Parliamentary  Government  of  which  France  and  England  are  so 
proud. 


206  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

faults  of  ardent  spirits  who  take  to  politics  in  a  stirring 
age:— 

"  Pierced  by  thoughts  of  the  ills  in  the  world  around  them,  they  are 
overwhelmed  by  a  noble  impatience  to  remove,  to  lessen,  to  abate. 
Before  they  have  set  sail  they  insist  that  they  already  see  some  new 
planet  swimming  into  their  ken,  and  touch  the  promised  land.  The 
abstract,  d  priori  notion,  formed  independently  of  experience,  inde- 
pendently of  evidence,  is  straightway  clothed  with  all  the  sanctity  of 
absolute  principle.  Generous  aspiration,  exalted  enthusiasm,  is  made 
to  do  duty  for  reasoned  scrutiny.  They  seize  every  fact  or  circum- 
stance that  makes  their  way,  they  are  blind  to  every  other.  Inflexible 
preconceptions  hold  the  helm.  They  exaggerate,  their  sense  of  pro- 
portion is  bad."1 

British  policy,  under  the  direction  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George, 
tended  to  lack  proportion ;  it  became  a  policy  of  parochial- 
ism. The  Imperial  Idea  seemed  to  have  vanished  from 
the  brains  of  British  politicians.  Englishmen  had  had 
forced  upon  them  a  prolonged  constitutional  crisis,  which 
would  have  been  worse  than  futile  if  it  had  not  happily 
served  the  purpose  of  arousing  the  bewilderment  and  the 
dismay  of  the  Dominions,  and  thereby  contributing  (to- 
gether with  the  episode  summed  up  by  the  words  Canadian 
Reciprocity,  the  meeting  of  the  Imperial  Conference,  and 
later  on,  the  Coup  of  Agadir)  to  save  England  from  an 
insular  grave. 

The  debate  on  the  Parliament  Bill,  which  for  months 
absorbed  the  entire  attention  of  political  parties,  at  a 
time  when  the  Triple  Alliance  was  strengthening  its 
position  in  the  Middle  East  from  the  Balkans  to  Baghdad, 
showed  many  things,  and  showed  especially  the  weakness, 
the  absurdity  of  party  government  based  on  the  "  rights 
of  the  majority  " ;  but  above  all  showed  that  England's 
primordial  interests  were  being  neglected. 

That  a  system  of  party  government  based  on  the 

1  Address,  June  28,  1912,  as  Chancellor  of  Manchester  University. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     207 

"  rights  of  the  majority  "  is  by  no  means  a  satisfactory 
way  of  organizing  democracy,  is  being  proved  with  re- 
ductio  ad  dbsurdum  clearness  by  the  experiments  now 
making  all  over  the  world.  It  was  already  sufficiently 
indicated  during  the  British  crisis,  which  resulted  in  the 
Parliament  Act — the  measure  abolishing  the  right  of  veto 
of  the  Upper  House  while  giving  it  a  "  suspensive  veto  " 
— by  the  facility  with  which  the  Prime  Minister  became  a 
"  tyrant  "  in  the  provisional  interests  of  his  party.  That 
crisis  emphasized  the  necessity  of  an  electoral  reform 
ensuring  the  representation  of  minorities — and  it  may  be 
said,  without  insisting  further,  that  it  illustrated  the  truth 
that  the  French  pre-Revolutionary  conception  of  popular 
rights,  the  socio-political  organization  of  the  Old  Regime, 
on  which  popular  liberties  had  been  organized  in  syndi- 
cates of  interests  known  as  "  Etats"  was  a  more  practical 
and  more  really  democratic  system  than  the  English  in- 
vention of  representative  government.  But  it  must  be 
granted  that  no  one  who  accepts  the  traditional  British 
view  of  "  party  government  "  had  a  right  to  criticize 
Mr.  Asquith's  action  on  the  ground  of  its  illogical  char- 
acter. Evidently  the  Bang,  broad-basing  his  policy  on 
the  English  democratic  theory  of  the  sovereignty  of  the 
people,  and  accepting  the  British  notion  of  party  govern- 
ment founded  on  the  majority  system,  regarded  the 
General  Elections  that  renewed  the  Liberal  "  Mandate  " 
as  possessing  all  the  virtue  of  a  referendum.  By  tem- 
porarily— and  constitutionally — becoming  a  radical,  and 
resisting  the  appeal  of  the  irresponsible  Conservative 
statesmen  to  cease  to  be  a  Constitutional  Sovereign,  the 
King  showed  himself  more  conservative  than  the  Con- 
servatives. He  probably  saved  his  country  from  Revo- 
lution. 

It  was  plausibly  argued  that  the  upshot  of  the  long 


208  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

debate  over  the  Parliament  Bill — namely,  Mr.  Asquith's 
letter  (his  "  coup  d'etat  "),  menacing  the  House  of  Lords 
with  an  arbitrary  increase  of  the  Liberal  majority  (by 
means  of  the  device  known  as  the  "  Prerogative  of  the 
Crown  "  for  the  creation  of  new  peers),  so  that  the  existing 
dominant  majority  of  Conservatives  might  be  outvoted 
and  the  Upper  House  coerced  into  a  line  of  action  parallel 
with  that  of  the  House  of  Commons — showed  that  Govern- 
ment in  England  to-day  is  Single-Chamber  Government 
based  on  the  Party  System.  It  was  pointed  out  that, 
for  the  menace  to  have  any  reality,  its  efficacy  should  not 
be  beyond  doubt ;  and  that  its  efficacy  would  be  doubted 
if  there  existed  any  known  constitutional  recourse  against 
its  realization.  The  fact  that  the  Prime  Minister  used 
the  menace  for  his  party  ends  was  everywhere  interpreted 
as  a  proof  that  he  was  the  master  of  the  King's  Pre- 
rogative. But  the  conclusion  was  not,  in  logic,  con- 
clusive. The  fact  that  the  head  of  a  disciplined  majority 
in  the  Lower  House  should  be  in  a  position,  by  using  the 
"  Prerogative  of  the  Crown,"  to  carry  out  his  will  as  to 
legislation  in  the  Upper  House  implies,  not  one  thing,  but 
two  things :  that  either  the  King  is  a  coerced,  or  that  he 
is  a  willing,  accomplice  of  the  Prime  Minister's  action. 
In  the  former  case  the  King  "  rules  "  but  does  not 
"  govern,"  which  is,  indeed,  the  British  constitutional 
boast,  and,  for  England,  the  definition  of  a  "  Constitu- 
tional Sovereign  ";  in  the  latter  case,  the  King's  own  re- 
sponsibility is  engaged,  but  the  theory  of  the  "  Constitu- 
tional Sovereign  "  annihilated.  It  was  of  the  highest 
importance,  therefore,  to  ascertain  (and  Mr.  Balfour  was 
intelligent  enough  to  put  the  question)  when,  and  in 
what  conditions,  the  King  was  ready  to  use  his  Royal 
Prerogative;  for,  if  he  promised  the  Prime  Minister  to 
create  peers,  provided  the  Prime  Minister  should  one  day 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    209 

want  them — the  method  of  the  "  blank  cheque  ";  that  is 
to  say,  if  he  let  the  Prime  Minister  understand  that  he 
held  himself  to  be  constitutionally  at  the  beck  and  call 
of  the  Prime  Minister,  irrespective  of  his  own  feelings  or 
views — he  thereby  acquiesced  in  the  traditional  British 
view  of  the  Constitutional  Sovereign,  and  illustrated,  at 
the  same  time,  the  vast  difference  between  the  British 
Constitution  and,  say,  the  American,  as  regards  the  role 
of  the  head  of  the  State.  His  action  showed,  once  again, 
that  in  the  English  system  there  is  no  check,  as  far  as  the 
sovereign's  role  is  concerned,  to  hasty  or  ill-considered 
legislation ;  such  action,  in  a  word,  tended  to  enhance  the 
despotism  of  the  representative  assembly.  If,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  King  agreed  to  use  his  Prerogative  only 
in  response  to  the  Prime  Minister's  specific  appeal  at  a 
specific  crisis,  he  was  thereby  acting  not  as  a  "  Consti- 
tutional Sovereign  "  of  the  alleged  British  constitutional 
form,  but  as  an  independent  organ  of  the  machine  of 
government,  as,  indeed,  a  Head-of-the-State,  like  the 
President  of  the  United  States,  who  possesses  the  power 
of  veto  and  uses  it  in  virtue  of  his  normal  constitutional 
role. 

The  question  put  by  Mr.  Balfour  as  to  the  date  of  the 
guarantees  given  the  Prime  Minister  by  the  Crown  was 
therefore  not  merely  a  matter  of  historical  interest,  or  of 
curious  inquiry.  A  clear  answer  to  that  question  was  re- 
quired in  order  to  comprehend  the  real  nature  of  the 
political  crisis  in  England,  or  indeed  whether  that  crisis 
was  in  reality  a  constitutional  crisis.  It  was  imperative 
to  know  how  and  why  the  King's  Prerogative  was  trans- 
ferred to  the  Prime  Minister,  for  use  in  connexion  with 
the  Parliament  Bill,  before  it  was  possible  positively  to 
conclude  that  government  to-day  in  England  is  Single- 
Chamber  government;  that  is  to  say,  a  reversion  to  the 


210  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

dangerous  form  of  Assembly  which  grew  up  during  the 
French  Revolution,  and  is  at  the  antipodes  of  the  forms 
evolved,  under  the  inspiration  of  more  rational  ideas, 
to  surround  the  expression  of  the  people's  will  with 
steadying  checks.  Even,  however,  if  the  King  acted  in 
the  spirit  of  an  independent  chef  d'etat — lending  his  Pre- 
rogative for  temporary  application  to  a  special  situation, 
as  an  American  president  in  the  interests  of  the  nation 
exercises  his  veto  for  particular  ends — such  combined 
action  on  the  part  of  Commons  and  King  against  the 
Lords  could  not  but  diminish  the  prestige  of  the  Upper 
House,  and  show  the  need  of  a  readjustment  of  its  "  con- 
stitutional "  role — while  at  the  same  time  it  exposed  the 
institution  of  the  Monarchy,  qua  institution,  to  legiti- 
mate discussion  as  regards  its  role  in  the  British  Con- 
stitution. 

What  was  obvious  was  that  Mr.  Asquith's  action  did 
not  at  any  moment  clear  up  the  confusion  reigning  in 
men's  minds  as  to  the  reciprocal  relations  of  the  several 
parts  of  the  British  constitutional  machine.  It  is  more 
difficult  to-day  than  ever  to  feel  sure  what  is  the  role  of 
the  King;  what  that  of  the  Commons,  wJmt  that  of  the 
Lords;  and  these  ambiguities  show  clearly  for  the  first 
time  what  confusion  exists  in  the  British  Constitution. 
They  hint  at  the  advisability  of  defining  the  diverse 
functions  of  the  parts  of  the  State  by  a  paper  constitu- 
tion which  shall  both  embalm  old  precedents  and  prepare 
the  nation  for  new  situations.  In  any  case  the  creation 
of  fresh  peers — that  is,  the  sudden  circumstantial  packing 
of  an  Upper  House  with  members  friendly  to  the  Govern- 
ment, in  order  to  pass  Government  measures — would 
always  have  to  be  regarded  as  a  bungling  method  of 
representative  government,  even  if  it  were  not  an  arbi- 
trary or  possibly  a  revolutionary  measure.  A  Prime 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    211 

Minister  and,  indeed,  any  statesman,  will  invariably  be 
excused  for  adopting  revolutionary  methods  if  he  can 
prove  that  a  Constitution  is  unworkable.  But  he  will 
not  be  approved  for  upsetting  a  Constitution  if  all  he  can 
say  is,  "  It  doesn't  work  as  I  should  like  it  to."  Mr. 
Asquith  argued  that  his  action  was  justifiable  because 
the  country  was  behind  him,  with  two  General  Elections 
to  the  good  for  the  proof  of  his  argument.  But  that  was 
not  proved,  since  only  a  precise  referendum  on  a  definite 
question  can  ever  prove  such  a  point  as  that. 

At  all  events,  the  episode  served  merely  as  an  object- 
lesson  showing  the  flimsiness  and  not-up-to-dateness  of 
the  so-called  British  Constitution.  Mr.  Asquith's  action, 
revolutionary  in  its  manner,  was  not  so  clearly  un- 
Constitutional  as  to  be  really  Revolutionary;  and  it  will 
have  served  the  end  of  hastening  the  necessary  movement 
making  for  a  reform  that  shall  provide  England  with  a  real 
Constitution,  in  harmony  not  only  with  the  social  and 
economic  evolution  of  the  Three  Kingdoms,  but,  above 
all,  with  the  new  requirements  of  an  Empire  composed  of 
five  self-governing  nations  of  equal  status  and  common 
interests.^- 

Throughout  the  disastrous  period  of  England's  absorp- 
tion in  her  constitutional  crisis,  Germany  was  engaged  in 
difficult  and  secret  negotiations  with  France,  in  pursu- 
ance of  the  common  efforts  of  the  two  Powers  to  apply 
their  Agreement  of  1909.  As  her  newspapers  showed, 
Germany  was  fully  aware  of  the  germs  making  for  the 
disintegration  of  England.  The  signs  of  national,  as 
well  as  of  constitutional,  crises  in  England  were  indeed 
becoming  so  ominous  and  so  abundant  that  they  were 
attracting  the  attention  of  the  entire  world. 

One  of  the  most  startling  of  these  signs  was  the  negotia- 

1  Seep.  311  etseq. 


212  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

tion  between  Canada  and  the  United  States  over  the 
question  of  Reciprocity.  Owing  to  the  failure  of  the 
British  Government  and  Parliament  to  put  into  effect 
in  good  time  the  Imperial  policy  defended  by  Mr.  Cham- 
berlain, the  British  Colonies  had  been  rapidly  moving 
towards  a  state  of  all  but  complete  independence.  For 
several  years  they  had  been  insisting  on  the  right  to  be 
called  "  Dominions,"  and  Canada,  notably,  had  concluded 
commercial  treaties  with  other  States,  indifferent  as  to  the 
possible  consequences  for  British  trade.  The  so-called 
British  Empire  was  falling  asunder.  And  when,  in  the 
latter  half  of  1910,  the  President  of  the  United  States 
proposed  to  the  Prime  Minister  of  Canada  a  reciprocity 
treaty  "  that,"  as  he  himself  put  it  in  a  private  letter 
to  Mr.  Roosevelt  (January  10,  1911),  "would  make 
Canada  only  an  adjunct  of  the  United  States,"  the 
British  Government  had  so  completely  lost  the  reins  of 
sovereignty  that  all  they  could  devise  to  save  Canada 
for  the  "  Empire  "  was,  in  Lord  Haldane's  words,  "  sym- 
pathetically to  watch  "  the  astounding  colloquy  between 
Mr.  Taft  and  Sir  W.  Laurier.  With  deliberate  un- 
concern, the  noble  Viscount  said :  "  We  are  going  to  leave 
the  British  merchant  to  flourish  in  the  future  as  he  has 
done  in  the  past  under  Free  Trade,  and  to  leave  the  British 
Empire  to  hold  together  by  bonds  of  sympathy  "  (House  of 
Lords,  May  18,  1911). 

The  policy  of  the  Cunctators  and  the  Pilates,  the  policy 
of  washing  one's  hands  of  all  responsibility,  is  often  con- 
venient, but  is  not  always  followed  without  risk.  Canadian 
loyalty  was  later  on  to  save  Imperial  honour,  but  the 
British  Government  did  nothing  to  put  themselves  into 
a  state  of  grace  making  England  meet  for  such  salvation ; 
they  did  nothing  to  prevent  the  sudden  snapping  of  the 
ties  linking  Canada  to  the  Empire.  In  general,  at  this 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    213 

juncture,  the  reticence  of  British  island-opinion  was  a 
spectacle  that  seemed,  in  itself,  to  be  less  a  proof  of  tactful 
and  dignified  discretion  than  a  kind  of  stoic  morituri  salu- 
tamus  addressed  to  Britain's  offspring.  Shakespeare  seemed 
to  have  foreseen  this  hour  when  he  made  Lear  say: — 

"  Meantime  we  shall  express  our  darker  purpose, 
Give  me  the  map  there. — Know  that  we  have  divided 
In  three  (five)  our  Kingdom:  and  'tis  our  fast  intent 
To  shake  all  cares  and  business  from  our  age; 
Conferring  them  on  younger  strengths,  while  we 
Unburthened  crawl  towards  death.  ..." 

To  be  sure,  when  Lear  was  quite  spent  with  an  intolerable 
despair,  Kent  saw  where  succour  lay,  and  Cordelia  came 
from  France  to  bring  her  father's  spirit  peace: — 

"  But,  true  it  is,  from  France  there  comes  a  power 
Into  this  scattered  Kingdom.  .  '.  ." 

France  was  not  Canada;  France  could  do  nothing  to 
arrest  the  fateful  gravitation  of  the  great  North- American 
Dominion  towards  the  pull  of  its  mighty  neighbour ;  and 
France,  moreover,  was  even  at  that  very  hour  unwittingly 
indulging  in  a  dangerous  experiment.  She  was  fishing  in 
the  troubled  waters  of  the  negotiations  consequent  upon 
the  1909  Agreement  with  Germany,  an  Agreement  which, 
if  it  had  been  really  applicable,  would  have  rendered  the 
Entente  Cordiale  no  more  than  a  matter  of  past  history. 
The  statues  which  surround  the  memorial  monument  to 
the  Great  Queen  in  front  of  Buckingham  Palace  assumed 
in  1911  the  aspect  of  Gonerils  and  Regans  personifying 
the  Daughter  States;  and  when  the  noble  Coronation 
Procession  disappeared  through  the  Arch  down  the  per- 
spective of  the  Mall,  it  required  no  blending  of  fantasy 
with  the  imagination  to  perceive  the  Venerable  Mother, 
as  she  looked  on  her  wilful  daughters  in  the  dusk  of  even- 
ing, take  on  the  semblance  of  a  weeping  Niobe. 


214  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

The  tragic  spectacle  was  the  finest  comedy  for  Eng- 
land's enemies,  but  it  caused  bewilderment  in  France. 
"  It  is  her  own  soul  that  Canada  risks  to-day,"  tele- 
graphed1 England's  Imperial  poet,  the  man  who  had 
done  most  to  render  the  soul  of  the  average  Englishman 
articulate.  "  Once  that  soul  is  pawned  for  any  con- 
sideration, Canada  must  inevitably  conform  to  the  com- 
mercial, legal,  financial,-  social,  and  ethical  standards 
which  will  be  imposed  upon  her  by  the  sheer  admitted 
weight  of  the  United  States."  "  Not  so,"  had  said 
President  Taft  publicly,  "  all  talk  of  annexation  is  bosh  " 
— the  same  President  who  had  privately  solicited  for  his 
policy  the  approval  of  the  founder  of  American  Im- 
perialism, his  predecessor  Mr.  Roosevelt,  with  the  assur- 
ance that  Reciprocity  would  "  make  Canada  only  an 
adjunct  of  the  United  States."  A  candidate  for  the 
Presidency,  with  jubilant  indiscretion,  had  publicly  de- 
clared that  such  was  indeed  the  case.  And  England's 
best  friends  did  not  doubt  it,  nor  did  they  doubt  that 
Canada  was  irrevocably  lost  to  the  Crown.  Even  so  per- 
spicacious an  observer  as  Rear- Admiral  Mahan  did  not 
doubt  it.  Writing  in  the  Century  Magazine  on  "  The 
Panama  Canal  and  Sea  Power  in  the  Pacific,"  he  pointed 
out  that  the  military  effect  upon  Sea  Power  of  the  Panama 
Canal  would  be  the  facility  with  which  the  navy  of  the 
United  States  and  "  that  of  the  government  controlling 
Canada  "  could  pass  from  one  side  to  the  other,  in  sup- 
port of  either  coast,  as  needed ;  and  he  added  that  he  had 
advisedly  used  the  words  "  the  government  controlling 
Canada,"  for,  while  Canada  was  a  part  of  the  British 
Empire,  it  was  "  difficult,  in  view  of  current  political 
discussions  in  Canada,  especially  those  touching  the  ques- 

1  From  Bateman's,  Burwash,  Sussex,  on  September  6,  to  the  Mon- 
treal Star. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    215 

tion  of  support  to  the  Empire,  not  to  feel  that  the  pre- 
ponderant tone  there  did  not  in  that  respect  reflect  that 
of  Australia,  New  Zealand,  or  even  of  South  Africa." 
Rear-Admiral  Mahan  concluded — with  all  the  world, 
before  the  fall  of  Sir  W.  Laurier,  in  the  year  of  Agadir, 
and  while  the  United  States  and  England  were  signing 
an  Arbitration  Treaty  for  the  settlement  even  of  ques- 
tions of  National  Honour  ! — that  there  "  did  not  appear 
to  be  between  Canada  and  Great  Britain  that  strong 
dependence  of  mutual  interests  of  defence,  of  which  the 
British  Navy  is  the  symbol  and  the  instrument."  He 
deeply  regretted  the  fact,  but  the  fact  seemed  incon- 
testable; there  was  no  gainsaying  it. 

Indeed,  viewed  from  the  United  States,  in  the  late 
summer  of  1911,  England's  plight  seemed  even  more 
terrible  than  when  it  was  contemplated  from  Paris  in 
1910  and  before  July  1  (Agadir),  1911.  It  was  obvious 
that  the  effect  of  Agadir  on  European  politics  would  be 
all  to  the  good,  that  the  stupid  coup  would  finally  and 
definitively  weld  the  Entente  Cordiale,  galvanize  Eng- 
land, re-temper  the  French  national  soul,  and  establish 
for  yet  a  few  sure  years  the  European  balance  of  power. 
But  "  Reciprocity,"  and  the  doubtful  issue  of  the  Im- 
perial Conference  of  British  Premiers,  had  bared  to  the 
nations  the  misery  and  nakedness  of  England.  Her  old- 
time  Imperial  optimism  appeared  to  have  migrated  to 
the  North- American  Atlantic  States.  From  Montreal  to 
Boston,  from  Boston  to  New  York,  from  New  York  to 
Charleston  and  Atlanta,  the  magic  word  "  Reciprocity  " 
seemed  to  be  a  kind  of  mystic  pass-word  ushering  in  the 
new  era,  the  century  of  the  Panama  Canal,  and  giving 
an  opportunity  for  all  the  admittedly  belated  readjust- 
ments of  the  Monroe  Doctrine. 

In  general,  and  always,  on  the  American  Continent,  the 


216  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

air  of  individual  liberty,  of  reciprocal  trust,  of  tolerant 
and  untrammelled  thought,  that  men  breathe  is  lighter, 
more  invigorating,  than  in  Europe;  and,  as  the  breasts 
of  the  self-reliant  citizens  of  the  Western  communities 
expand,  the  well-being  that  pervades  their  organisms  is 
one  that  the  long-disciplined  inhabitants  of  an  older 
society  have  never  known  and  find  it  difficult  to  under- 
stand. In  1911  the  Americans,  those  to  the  north  of 
the  Great  Lakes  as  well  as  those  of  the  United  States, 
seemed  to  be  more  than  ever  keenly  aware  of  the  differ- 
ence between  themselves  and  the  Europeans.  "  Reci- 
procity "  appeared  to  them  quite  the  most  natural  thing 
in  the  world.  The  fighting  on  the  American  Continent 
during  the  past  three  centuries,  as  ex-President  Eliot  of 
Harvard  has  pointed  out,  has  not  been  of  the  sort  which 
most  imperils  liberty.  The  French  and  English  wars 
furnished  a  school  of  martial  qualities  at  small  cost  to 
liberty;  and  the  War  of  Independence  was,  like  the  war 
of  1861,  a  "  Civil  War  ";  the  one  was  as  much  a  Rebellion 
as  the  other.  Both  were  waged  in  defence  of  the  British 
tradition  of  Free  Institutions,  and  both  resulted  in  a 
reinforcement  of  the  ideal  of  individual  freedom.  Nothing 
is  more  characteristic  of  the  temper  of  human  nature  on 
the  North  American  Continent  than  the  fact  that  in  1817 
the  same  President  who  was  to  give  his  name  to  that 
proud  American  doubled-edged  policy  known  as  the 
Monroe  Doctrine,  signed  a  Convention  with  Great  Britain 
by  which  England  and  the  United  States  should  maintain 
on  the  Great  Lakes  only  a  few  insignificant  vessels  for 
the  policing  of  those  shores .  No  buffer  state  or  bristling 
armament  impeded  the  natural  advance  into  England's 
Canadian  territory  of  the  spirit  of  individual  American 
self-reliance;  and  the  new  Reciprocity  Treaty  of  1910 
and  1911  seemed  to  be  but  the  natural,  the  inevitable, 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     217 

consequence  of  this  pacific  penetration  of  Americanism. 
It  was  the  contagion  of  "  American  "  ideas  that  engen- 
dered that  peculiar  Canadian  form  of  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine to  which  Sir  W.  Laurier  gave  expression  when  he 
reiterated  at  the  Imperial  Conference  the  intention  of 
Canada  never  to  become  embroiled  in  a  British  quarrel 
unless  it  suited  her  to  do  so;  and  the  anti-imperialistic 
Anglo-Canadian  Convention  as  to  the  relations  between 
the  British  and  Canadian  navies  was  but  the  formal  con- 
firmation of  this  resolve,  and  the  definite  expression  of 
the  feeling  behind  such  utterances. 

Sir  Wilfred  Laurier,  returning  from  the  Imperial  Con- 
ference of  May  23  to  June  20,  had  sailed  triumphantly  up 
the  river  from  Quebec  amid  cheering  crowds  on  the 
wharves,  and  shipping  decked  with  bunting.  He  was 
welcomed  in  Montreal  as  the  champion  of  Canadian 
autonomy.  He  himself  acquiesced,  declaring  that  he  had 
fought  at  the  Conference  "  for  the  equality  of  the  two 
races  and  the  vindication  of  Canada's  rights  as  an  au- 
tonomous country."  He  added:  "We  were  asked  to 
endorse  a  proposal  for  the  creation  of  an  Imperial  Council, 
which  would  decide  military  and  naval  policies  and  the 
taxation  of  the  people.  I  opposed  this,  because  it  would 
have  been  an  abrogation  of  our  rights  and  opposed  to  the 
doctrine  of  responsible  government."  This  proud  affirma- 
tion of  a  policy  avowedly  hi  opposition  to  the  "  imperial 
jingoes,"  this  appeal  to  Canadian  national  sentiment, 
was  made  by  the  statesman  who  had  hurried  home  "  to 
renew  the  fight  for  Reciprocity,"  an  idea  which  he 
cherished,  not  because  he  loved  the  United  States,  but 
because  he  believed  that  by  its  realization  he  would  all 
but  definitively  secure  Canadian  independence.  He  had 
neither  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling's  nor  Rear- Admiral  Mahan's 
sense  of  the  risks.  His  speech  was  made  on  July  12. 


218  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Just  twelve  days  before,  the  European  Governments  had 
been  informed  by  the  German  Chancellor  that  the  Panther 
was  to  be  sent  to  Agadir.  Nine  days  later,  at  the  Lord 
Mayor's  banquet  in  London,  Mr.  Lloyd  George  made  the 
speech  which,  rattling  round  the  world,  showed  that  at 
last  England  had  awakened.  The  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer reminded  Germany — and  he  reminded  the  Do- 
minions— that  the  British  Empire  was  still  in  existence; 
and  that  national  honour  and  the  security  of  England's 
great  international  trade  were  not  party  questions  .  .  . 
"  Reciprocity  "  was  doomed  !  Sir  Wilfrid  Laurier  had 
opposed  a  proposal  for  the  creation  of  an  Imperial  Council 
which  should  decide  military  and  naval  policy  and  the 
taxation  of  the  people.  He  had  virtually  repudiated  the 
Empire1  and  affirmed  the  detachment  of  Canada;  and 
Mr.  Fisher,  at  the  same  Imperial  Conference,  had  seriously 
suggested  that  the  Conference  should  be  extended  to 
include  Foreign  Powers — fatuities  that  seemed  to  echo 
the  incredible  British  ignorance  of  world-conditions,  and 
be  one  with  the  sublimely  stupid  efforts  to  avert  the  risks 
of  war  by  signing  unrestricted  Arbitration  Treaties.  Less 
than  three  weeks  before  Agadir,  the  Committee  of  the 
International  Arbitration  and  Peace  Association  had 
voted  the  following  resolution : — 

"This  Committee  expresses  its  satisfaction  that  the  Colonial  Con- 
ference has  rejected  a  scheme  for  a  Central  Imperial  Council  which 
would  have  seriously  hampered  the  freedom  both  of  the  United  King- 
dom and  of  the  Colonial  Governments,  would  have  put  India  at  an 

1  After  having  (and  this  should  never  be  forgotten)  "long  and 
earnestly  striven  for  that  Britannic  trade  policy  which  alone  could 
justify  the  conception  of  Britannic  alliance-in-perpetuity."  Between 
1897  and  1907  the  Canadian  Government  did  everything  in  their  power 
to  obtain  Britannic  reciprocity  without  appearing  to  dictate.  Cf. 
The  Britannic  Question,  by  Richard  Jebb,  pp.  113,  145.  (Longmans, 
1913.) 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     219 

even  greater  disadvantage  than  at  present  as  compared  with  the  rest 
of  the  Empire,  and  by  emphasizing  unnaturally  the  question  of  Imperial 
Defence  would  Jiave  been  liable  to  increase  the  tendency  to  military  and 
naval  panics." 

Indeed,  when  the  Imperial  Conference  rose,  BO  unsatis- 
factory was  the  outlook — notwithstanding  the  fact  that 
the  representatives  of  the  Dominions  had  been  "  admitted 
into  the  ulterior  of  the  Imperial  household,"  had  been 
shown  the  very  "  arcanae  imperil,  without  any  reserva- 
tion or  qualification  '51 — that  it  really  seemed  as  if  Eng- 
land must  make  up  her  mind  to  the  loss  of  her  Dominions, 
to  the  loss  of  the  Empire,  and  as  if  the  only  attitude  left 
her,  in  face  of  the  German  hordes,  was  that  of  the  Roman 
senators  when  the  barbarians  appeared  on  their  thresh- 
olds. A  doctor  in  political  science,  investigating  Eng- 
land's plight  at  this  hour,  would  have  prescribed  as  fol- 
lows: She  must  learn  to  look  facts  in  the  face;  abandon 
her  dilatory  tactics;  cultivate  the  habit  of  intellectual 
probity2 — tear  the  scales  from  her  eyes;  recognize  that 
the  old  game  is  up;  that  the  Colonies  are  not  Depen- 
dencies, but  full-fledged  Dominions;  that  no  cut-and- 
dried  scheme  of  Union  can  ever  bind  these  Daughters  to 
the  Mother-Country ;  and,  concentrating  all  her  energy  on 
the  conservation  of  Union  within  the  Island  Kingdom, 
and  on  the  preservation  of  India,  Egypt,  and  the  Islands 
of  the  Pacific,  awake  to  the  truth  that  Europe  is  Europe, 
and  that  as  long  as  Germany  is  Germany,  the  Britons 

1  Speech  of  Mr.  Asquith,  final  sitting. 

2  People  that  do  not  want  to  believe  what  they  believe  are  pre- 
destined to  the  habit  of  believing  what  they  want  to  believe.    This 
means  that  the  people  who  have  a  tendency  to  believe  what  they  want 
to  believe  are  they  who  hesitate  to  look  facts  in  the  face.     Humanity 
as  a  whole  is  not  so  stupid  as  it  appears  to  be.    Denial  of  evidence  is 
due  more  often  to  intellectual  cowardice — lack  of  intellectual  probity — 
than  to  positive  ignorance.     Cf.  the  apathy  of  British  opinion  with 
regard  to  the  problem  of  Ulster  and  Irish  Home  Rule. 


220  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

and  the  Gauls  have  a  common  interest  and  must  hold 
together. 

The  British  Imperial  Conference  ended  its  deliberations 
on  June  20.  The  date  of  Agadir  is  July  1.  Almost 
exactly  one  year  later,  July  10,  1912 — Reciprocity  having 
been  buried,  the  Anglo-American  Arbitration  Treaty 
paralysed — Mr.  Borden,  the  new  Prime  Minister  of  an 
awakened  Canada,  stated  in  London,  whither  he  had 
come  to  confer  on  the  lessons  which  Agadir  had  finally 
revealed  even  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  world,  that  the  sea 
defence  of  the  Empire  could  best  be  secured  by  one 
navy;  and  he  added:  "  The  Canadian  ideal  is  one  king, 
one  flag,  one  Empire,  one  navy — one  navy  powerful 
enough  to  vindicate  the  flag,  and  maintain  the  integrity 
of  the  Empire."  The  crisis  was  over  !  England  was  to 
be  saved  by  the  Dominions  \l 

As  regards  Canada  herself,  what  had  taken  place  was 
quite  simple.  The  Canadians,  who  are  firmly  resolved 
at  all  costs  to  maintain  their  autonomy,  fancied  in  1910 
and  1911  that  Commercial  Reciprocity  with  the  United 
States  was  the  shortest  cut  to  national  independence; 
and  the  same  people  rejected  Reciprocity  because  they 
suddenly  became  convinced  that  the  only  way,  after  all, 
to  save  their  national  soul  was  to  lose  it,  not  to  the 
United  States,  but  to  the  Empire.  The  ends  sought  by 
Sir  Wilfred  Laurier  and  Mr.  Borden  were  identical.  Their 
methods  alone  differed.  In  the  Canadian  case  it  has 
happened  that  second  thoughts  were  best.  Under  the 
Stars  and  Stripes  Canada  would  inevitably  have  been 

1  "  It  is  scarcely  a  paradox  to  say  that  in  the  world  as  we  know  it 
to-day,  the  German  fleet  alone  is  worth  a  hundred  times  as  much  as 
Imperial  Preference  or  even  an  Imperial  Council,  as  a  cement  of  the 
British  Empire." — The  Foundations  of  British  Policy,  by  J.  A.  Spender, 
p.  40. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    221 

absorbed.  Under  the  Union  Jack  she  will  perhaps  be- 
come what  her  late  Governor- General,  Earl  Grey,  pro- 
phesied of  her  on  July  10,  1912 :  "  The  controlling  part  of 
the  Empire."  Among  the  results  of  the  Coup  d'Agadir 
none  was  more  unexpected,  and  none  obviously  of  more 
far-reaching  consequence.  England,  moreover,  was  no 
longer  "  to  shake  all  cares  and  business  from  her  age," 
and,  "  unburthened,  crawl  towards  death."  To-day  the 
lines  addressed  by  Walt  Whitman  to  "  America  "  seem 
to  have  been  meant  for  the  older  country  :— 

"  Centre  of  equal  daughters,  equal  sons, 
All,  all  alike,  endear'd,  grown,  ungrown,  young  and  old, 
Strong,  ample,  fair,  enduring,  capable,  rich, 
Perennial  with  the  Earth,  with  Freedom,  Law  and  Love, 
A  grand,  sane,  towering,  seated  Mother 
Chair'd  in  the  adamant  of  Time." 


BOOK   III 


BOOK   III 


f  MHE  foregoing  attempt  to  analyse  the  political  history 
_L  and  domestic  crises  of  the  European  powers,  and  of 
the  two  rival  nations  in  North  America,  will  have  served, 
however  imperfect  it  is,  to  justify  certain  remarks  made 
in  the  earlier  pages  of  this  Essay.  Not  only  will  it  have 
shown  that  "  to  chronicle  the  doings  of  any  individual 
nation  without  writing  at  the  same  time  the  history  of 
all  other  peoples  is  no  longer  possible,"  it  will  also  have 
illustrated  the  more  general  truths  formulated  in  the 
statements  that  "  behind  the  fa9ade  of  Governments  two 
occult  powers — Money  and  Public  Opinion — are  now  de- 
termining the  destinies  of  the  world,"  and  that "  national 
spirit  is  manifested  only  when  nationality  is  menaced." 
It  is  not  infrequently  held  that  the  time  is  approaching 
when  the  coalition  of  political  passion  and  of  social  hatred 
and  envy  will  completely  dominate  what  still  remains  of 
national  feeling  or  prejudice.  It  is,  at  all  events,  a  fact 
that,  as  M.  Rene  Pinon  says,1  "  A  travers  les  frontieres 
tend  a  s'etablir  1'internationalisme  des  partis."  He  goes 
so  far  afield  as  to  recall  that  Philip  of  Macedon,  Alexander, 
and  later  on  the  Romans — when  they  undertook  to  sub- 
jugate Greece,  where  a  refined  civilization  veiled  the 
mortal  vice  of  class  war,  and  the  inexorable  antagonism 
of  rich  and  poor — were  always  able  to  count  on  the  com- 

1  La  lutte  pour  le  Pacifique,  p.  165. 

225  Q 


226  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

plicity,  either  of  the  plutocracy  careful  of  its  interests,  or 
of  the  demagogue  whose  tyranny  was  menaced.  Certain 
modern  parallels,  notably  Germany's  choice  of  methods 
in  her  efforts  to  subjugate  France,  might  be  more  perti- 
nent. In  modern  Europe,  continues  M.  Rene  Pinon, 
"  money  has  been  an  element  of  universal  corruption,  it 
has  upset  the  normal  play  of  the  governmental  and  ad- 
ministrative machinery,  it  has  destroyed  all  idealism." 
The  facts,  as  they  have  already  been  presented  in  these 
pages,  hardly  seem  to  warrant  so  sweeping  an  indictment : 
idealism,  at  all  events,  seems  still  to  hold  its  own  in  spite 
of  the  "corrupting"  power  of  wealth.  In  agreement 
with  the  diagnosis  herein  attempted  of  the  nature  of 
contemporary  unrest,  Signor  Guglielmo  Ferrero  notes  l 
that  the  European  peoples  are  beginning  again  to  care 
for  other  things  than  their  economic  organization  and 
questions  concerning  the  balance  of  trade.  The  interest- 
ing fact  is  that  modern  peoples  seem  to  crave  both  ideal 
moral  satisfactions  and  economic  well-being  :  they  want 
Reform  as  much  as  they  want  Money.  It  is  probable 
that  this  apparently  curious  inconsistency  is  no  incon- 
sistency whatever.  It  is  likely  that  the  growing  love  of 
order,  the  general  desire  for  reform,  and  the  outburst  of 
nationalism,  on  the  one  hand,  and,  on  the  other,  the 
recognition  of  the  fact  that  money  is  to-day  the  chief 
instrument  of  rapid  and  successful  action,  are  different 
aspects  of  the  same  state  of  mind.  In  any  case,  it  is 
absurd  to  prejudge  a  question  of  this  kind.  No  answer 
to  it  can  be  reasonably  attempted  before  considering  a 
characteristic  collection  of  those  concrete  economic 
factors  that  are  so  fast  tending  to  cosmopolitanize 
the  still  distinctly  differentiated  rival  nations  and 
peoples. 

1  "  I/Ideal  et  la  Richesse":  Le  Figaro,  September  10,  1912. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     227 


II 

When,  in  1847,  at  the  Congress  of  the  Communist 
Union  held  in  London,  Karl  Marx  and  Engels  launched 
the  cry :  "  Proletarians  of  all  countries,  unite  your 
forces!"  ;  when  in  1866,  at  Geneva,  working-class  dele- 
gates from  all  over  Europe  drew  up  the  statutes  of  the 
"International  Association  of  Working  Men";  when, 
finally,  the  revolutionary  army  organized  by  the  General 
Confederations  of  Labour  of  the  world,  abandoned  the 
Marseillaise  for  the  sinister  battle-song  of  the  Inter- 
nationale,1 these  battalions  of  the  proletariat  overlooked 
the  fact  that  the  growth  of  the  very  causes  which  had 
produced  the  illusion  of  a  similarity  of  interests  uniting 

1  II  n'est  pas  de  sauveur  supreme, 
Ni  Dieu,  ni  Cesar,  ni  tribun. 
Producteurs,  sauvons-nous  nous-memes  1 
Decretons  le  salut  comrnun  I 
***** 

Les  rois  nous  soiilaient  de  fumees, 
Paix  entre  nous,  guerre  aux  tyrans ! 
Appliquons  la  greve  aux  armees, 
Crosse  en  1'air  et  rompons  les  rangs ! 
S'ils  s'obstinent,  ces  cannibales, 
A  fake  de  nous  des  heros, 
Us  sauront  bientot  que  nos  balles 
Sont  pour  nos  propres  generaux ! 

Eefrain. 

Debout !  les  damnes  de  la  terre ! 
Debout !  les  formats  de  la  faim  ! 

La  raison  tonne  en  son  cratere, 
G'est  1'eruption  de  la  fin. 
Du  passe  faisons  table  rase, 
Foule  esclave,  debout,  debout ! 
Le  ruonde  va  changer  de  base  : 
Nous  ne  sonnnes  rien,  soyons  tout ! 


228  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

the  working  classes  in  all  countries  against  the  employer 
and  the  capitalist,  was  soon  to  shatter  that  illusion, 
through  the  action  of  a  new  factor.  That  new  factor 
was  the  world-wide  emigration  of  the  working  man  in 
search  of  better  labour  conditions  and  a  higher  wage. 
The  socialists  or  the  anarchists  of  the  "  Internationale,'" 
who  repudiated  so  fiercely  every  form  of  patriotic  or 
national  feeling,  who  condemned  gods,  governments 
and  armies  in  their  humanitarian  anti-militarist  frenzy, 
found  themselves  face  to  face  with  a  set  of  facts  which 
gave  a  surprisingly  foolish  look  to  their  internationalism. 
Thus  the  Italian  labourer  is  over-running  the  globe,  and 
becoming  the  rival  of  the  American  in  New  York,  and  of 
the  Frenchman  in  Provence,  in  Lorraine  and  in  the  lie 
de  France.  The  German  and  the  Swiss  are  colonizing 
Paris,  the  East  of  France,  South  America,  London.  The 
Pole  is  pullulating  on  both  slopes  of  the  Vosges.  The 
Scandinavian,  the  Russian  Jew,  the  Hungarian,  and  now 
the  Kabyle,  are  elbowing  the  native-born  of  every 
country.  So  overwhelming  is  the  mounting  tide  of 
immigration  in  the  United  States  and  certain  of  the 
British  Dominions  that  almost  annually  now  for  a 
quarter  of  a  century  those  countries  have  felt  called 
upon  to  raise  higher  and  higher  dykes  against  the  influx 
of  undesirables.1  In  fact,  to  use  the  words  of  an  excellent 

1  On  May  23,  1914,  the  London  Times  contained  the  following 
article  :  "  The  arrival  of  the  Komagata  Maru  with  375  Indians  on 
board  at  Victoria,  British  Columbia,  brings  to  a  head  a  crisis  which 
has  been  slowly  approaching  for  a  long  while  past.  Behind  the 
Imperial  aspects  of  the  case,  whether  all  subjects  of  the  British  Empire 
should  be  allowed  freely  to  move  about  from  one  portion  of  the  Empire 
to  another,  lies  the  wider  question  of  the  mixing  of  East  and  West. 
The  problem  recently  assumed  acute  proportions  in  South  Africa, 
where  thousands  of  Indians  under  Mr.  Gandhi  endeavoured  to  enter 
the  Transvaal  from  Natal,  and  struck  work  as  a  protest  against  the 
levying  of  the  yearly  residence  tax.  More  recently  we  have  had 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     229 

observer,  M.  Henri  Joly,  of  the  French  Academy  of  Moral 
and  Political  Sciences,  "  working  men,  when  they  gaze 
from  afar  across  the  boundaries  of  their  several  countries, 
look  upon  one  another  as  allies,  and  even  as  brothers ; 
but  when  they  are  brought  face  to  face  they  become 
rivals,  and  they  then  alter  their  policy."  In  every 
country  to-day  the  labour  syndicates — the  very  organ- 
izations that  had  invented  the  notion  of  revolutionary 
"direct  action,"  and  the  device  of  the  general  strike  in 
order  to  manifest  their  impatience  with  the  policy  of 
legality  followed  by  the  socialist  leaders  and  classic  trade 
unionists — these  syndicates  are  calling  on  governments 
and  parliaments  to  protect  them  against  the  alleged  dis- 
loyal competition  of  transient  foreign  labour.  Who  has 
forgotten  the  action  of  the  local  carpenters'  union  after 
the  destruction  of  San  Francisco  ?  The  annals  of  in- 
dustry in  every  country  in  Europe  are  filled  with  the 
records  of  strikes,  labour  riots,  murders  even,  consequent 
solely  upon  the  international  competition  of  the  working 
classes.  In  fact,  the  whole  theory  of  class  war,  with  its 
corollary  of  the  Internationale,  would  thus  seem  to  have 
been  a  very  hasty  generalization.  At  all  events  for  the 
moment  internationalism  in  the  labour  world  appears,  in 
its  curve  of  evolution,  to  have  taken  a  direction  parallel 


General  Sir  Ian  Hamilton  in  New  Zealand  sounding  a  warning  against 
the  Oriental,  '  who  lives  on  rice '  and  monopolizes  business.  For  a 
long  time  the  labour  market  in  British  Columbia  has  been  swamped. 
Hundreds  have  been  endeavouring  in  vain  to  procure  work.  This 
state  of  things  is  partially  due  to  the  immigration  of  unfit  white 
people,  but  also  to  the  numbers  of  Orientals  who  have  secured  entry 
into  the  country — according  to  the  census  returns  of  1911  there  were 
19,568  Chinese  alone  in  British  Columbia.  The  Japanese  threaten  to 
absorb  the  fisheries ;  every  small  shop  is  held  by  a  Chinese.  As  our 
correspondent  at  Victoria  says,  it  is  felt  that  Asia  is  knocking,  and 
knocking  persistently,  at  the  door  of  Western  America."  Cf.  p.  367. 


230  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

with  that  of  internationalism  in  the  political  world.  This 
is  another  example  of  the  fact  that  nationalism  is  mani- 
fested only  when  national  integrity  is  menaced. 

The  growing  claim  of  organized  labour  in  the  several 
nations  to  deal  with  the  majestic  phenomenon  of  migra- 
tion, to  demand,  that  is,  state  intervention,  in  the  form 
of  legislative  measures,  against  the  possibility  of  foreign 
competition,  calls  for  even  closer  analysis.  This  pecu- 
liarly picturesque  socio-economic  movement  has  been 
brilliantly  studied  by  the  Italian  writer,  Signer  Giu- 
seppe Prato  in  his  book :  II  Protezionismo  Operaio 
(Turin,  1910). l  The  legislative  measures  in  question 
assume  the  double  form,  first  of  protection  against  the 
invasion,  the  real  presence,  of  the  foreign  labour,  and 
secondly  of  customs  protection  against  the  cheap  pro- 
ducts of  the  foreign  workman.  Under  the  pretext  of 
the  "protection  of  national  industries,"  the  demand] for 
"  tariff  reform  "  and  the  interdiction  of  "  undesirables  " 
occur  everywhere  simultaneously.  Mr.  Chamberlain, 
as  far  back  as  August  1904,  declared  that  along  this 
path  lay  England's  safety.  "  Where  would  be  the 
logic,"  he  asked  in  the  House  of  Commons,  "if  the 
foreigners  to  whom  we  wish  to  close  British  territory, 
could,  by  remaining  in  Hamburg  or  in  Poland,  manu- 
facture products  with  which  they  could  inundate  our 
markets?"  And  even  the  very  peoples  who,  as  ex- 
porters of  labour,  ought  to  foster  every  form  of  economic 
laisser-faire,  the  Italians  and  the  Japanese  for  instance, 
keep  step  with  the  other  rival  nations  and  heed  the 
demand  of  their  proletariat  for  a  "  barbaric  "  exclusive- 
ness.  Quite  recently  the  European  Governments  had 
to  protest  against  a  project  of  the  Italian  Government 

1  Translated  into  French  by  M.  Georges  Bourgin :  Le  Protection- 
nisme  Ouvrier. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     231 

to  interdict  in  Italy  the  presence  of  foreign  insurance 
companies,1  and  Italian  labour  organizations  have  more 
than  once  demanded  arbitrary  measures  of  expulsion 
against  foreign  employers  established  in  Italy;  while 
the  same  Japanese  workmen  who  protest  against  Ameri- 
can restrictions  on  immigration,  have  called  on  their 
government  to  exclude  Chinese  labourers  from  Japan ! 

The  spectacle  has  an  ironic,  even  a  fine  comic  quality ; 
but  irony  and  absurdity  seem  to  characterize  most 
manifestations  of  the  human  mob.  At  all  events,  the 
tendency  to  act  absurdly  is  general ;  and  while  such 
action  is  unjustifiable  from  the  point  of  view  of  pure 
economics,  it  is  natural  and  inevitable  in  the  light  of 
what  we  know  of  human  motives  and  of  psychology  of 
crowds,  above  all  those  of  the  organic  communities, 
welded  together  by  common  traditions  and  common 
hopes,  known  as  nations.  The  orthodox  economist,  the 
doctrinaire,  "scientific"  ideologues,  may  protest  that 
the  protectionist  "  nationalistic  "  movement  in  question 
is  all  wrong.  Their  anguish  does  not  alter  the  fact  of 
its  existence.  Even  so  impartial  an  inquirer  as  Signor 
Prato,  the  first  to  co-ordinate  the  immense  mass  of  facts 
illustrating  what  he  calls  "  working-class  protectionism," 
refuses  to  dwell  on  any  but  the  purely  economic  aspects 
of  this  world-wide  phenomenon,  and  writes  with  the 
same  imperturbable  logic  untempered  by  common  sense 
that  Mr.  Norman  Angell  applies  to  the  problem  of 
international  disarmament. 

"  The  truth  is,"  he  says,  "that  it  really  matters  little  to  humanity  to 
know  what  area  is  to  be  reserved  in  the  future  to  the  expansion  of  the 
various  races.  What  greatly  interests  it  on  the  contrary  is  to  have 
the  assurance  that  none  of  the  natural  sources  of  wealth,  the  rational 

1  See  p.  360  et  seq. 


232  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

exploitation  of  which  may  bring  about  the  greatest  general  well-being, 
is  to  be  diverted  from  human  uses  by  the  monopolizing  selfishness  of 
little  organized  groups."1 

The  "  monopolizing  selfishness  of  little  organized 
groups"  is  "scientific"  tautology  for  "national  in- 
terest ";  and  until  Political  Economy  has  done  its 
worst  and  "Humanity"  becomes  a  reality — so  long, 
that  is,  as  the  word  Humanity  remains  only  a  metaphy- 
sic  fiction — it  will  matter  much  to  the  several  "little 
organized  groups  " — to  the  Italian  nation,  to  the  French 
nation,  to  the  British  nation,  to  the  Servian  nation,  or 
even  to  the  Chinese  nation,  as  the  Boxer  riots  showed 
— whether  they  are  suffered  to  expand  or  simply  to 
exist  in  their  own  way,  without  the  friction  of  alien 
elements  tending  to  alter  their  national  character  and 
to  destroy  their  cherished  parochial  prejudices.2  Signor 
Prato  admits  that  influences  of  climate,  traditions, 
language,  the  milieu,  family  affections  and  patriotism,3 
may  on  occasion  be  obstacles  in  the  way  of  that  ideal 
mobility  of  human  merchandise,  that  normal  flow  of 
immigration,  which  rejoices  the  hearts  of  the  economists. 
But  these  sentiments  he  regards  as  baneful  fictions  with 
which  science  not  only  should,  but  can,  do  away ;  for 
him  they  are  barbaric  prejudices,  retarding  the  progress 
of  civilization. 

Yet  it  does  not  seem  that  the  problems  raised,  for 
instance,  by  contemplation  of  the  socio-economic,  polit- 
ical conditions  in  the  mining  regions  of  the  frontiers 

1  Le  Protectionnisme  Ouvrier,  p.  119. 

2  How  resist  recommending  to  Signor  Prato's  attention  in  this  con- 
nexion the  typical  case  of  the  closing  down  of  the  great  steel  mills  at 
Gary,  Indiana,  in  October  1912,  owing  to  the   sudden  departure  of 
some  2,750  workmen  of  the  Slav  races  in  order  to  rejoin  the  colours  in 
the  crusade  of  the  Balkan  States  against  the  Turk  ? 

3  P.  250,  work  quoted. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     233 

between  Prussia,  Alsace-Lorraine  and  Luxembourg  can 
be  completely  illuminated  by  the  application  of  so  sim- 
plified a  generalization.  Thus,  for  it  matters  little  where 
the  observer  takes  his  stand,  more  than  eighty  per  cent, 
of  the  houses  in  the  French  portion  of  the  valley  of  the 
Meuse  are  owned  by  their  occupants.  These  proprietors 
are  shrewd  peasant  farmers  who  do  all  that  can  reason- 
ably be  expected  of  any  man  to  keep  the  birth-rate 
within  decorous  limits.  In  1904  the  excess  of  births 
over  deaths  was  143.  The  motives  of  the  Meusian 
peasant  are  Malthusian;  they  are  the  logical  conse- 
quence of  his  desire  not  to  continue  dividing  up  an 
inheritance  of  fields  which  has  already  suffered  painful 
partition.  He  adapts  himself  as  best  he  can  to  the  pro- 
visions of  the  Napoleonic  code,  and  what  is  the  result  ?  It 
is  noted  by  Captain  Vidal  de  la  Blache  in  his  monograph  on 
The  Lorraine  Valley  of  the  Meuse  (Armand  Colin,  p.  139) : 
"les  bras  manqueraient  a  la  terre  sans  Femploi  des 
machines  agricoles  et  sans  la  main  d'osuvre  etrangere 
(allemande,  luxembourgeoise,  beige)."  The  polyglot 
speech  of  the  international  nomad  is,  in  fact,  beginning 
to  offend  the  traveller's  ear  all  down  the  gentle  valley 
of  the  Meuse,  and  it  becomes  tolerable — although  even 
then  solely  for  aesthetic  reasons — only  when  heard  be- 
neath the  shadow  of  the  gloomy,  almost  feudal,  for- 
tresses, veritable  towers  of  Babel,  the  foundries  and 
blast  furnaces  of  the  valley  of  the  Chiers,  at  Longwy,  or 
Mont-Saint  Martin.  But  more  prolonged  immersion  in 
this  cacophony,  here,  even  here,  above  all  here,  evokes 
thoughts  of  which  the  political  economists  have  wisely 
washed  their  hands.  And  these  thoughts  are  multiplied 
a  thousandfold  by  more  intimate  acquaintance  with  the 
serfs  who  swarm  in  and  out  of  still  other  feudal  for- 
tresses, the  monster  iron  foundries  and  the  gigantic 


234  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

steel  works,  of  which  the  gleam  reddens  the  night  sky 
of  Luxembourg  and  Lorraine.  The  observer  will  learn 
there,  to  be  sure,  if  he  has  never  learned  before,  the 
impossibility,  the  futility,  the  absurdity  even,  of  erecting 
Chinese  walls  between  the  nations,  with  the  object  of 
preventing  the  reciprocal  exchange  of  products  or  of 
human  merchandise.  LTnquestionably  such  walls  are 
bound  to  be  scaled  by  the  nomad  labourer.1  They  are 
doomed  to  be  undermined  by  the  burrowing  forces — 
"  pacific  penetration  " — of  international  trade.  The 
"  patriotic  "  ideal  of  converting  the  several  nations  into 
water-tight  compartments,  within  which  each  people 
may  work  out  its  salvation  in  sacred  separation  from 
its  neighbours,  obviously  ignores  the  most  characteristic 
material,  and  many  of  the  moral,  forces  of  the  modern 
world.  Yet  there  is  still  left  the  main  question  as  to 
what  is  really  becoming  of  nationality  under  the  action 
of  these  forces.  In  this  connexion  it  is  interesting  to 
examine  with  some  detail  the  single  case  of  Luxem- 
bourg. 

Within  the  last  twenty-five  years,  in  that  picturesque 
little  Duchy — which  seemed  predestined  to  remain  one 
of  the  tranquil  backwaters  of  civilization — the  discovery 
of  a  rich  subsoil  has  internationalized  industry  and 
cosmopolitanized  a  rural  population.  All  the  economic 
and  social  conditions  have  been  transformed.  But  what 
is  the  real  nature  of  the  transformation  ?  As  one  of 
the  members  of  the  Luxembourg  Chamber  said,  during 

1  Annually,  for  the  past  fifteen  years,  the  population  of  Briey  has 
increased  by  5,000  souls.  On  January  1,  1914,  the  inhabitants 
numbered  128,000,  71,957  of  whom  were  foreigners;  46,237  of  these 
foreigners  were  Italians,  11,389  were  Belgians,  6,151  were  Germans 
(not  counting  the  immigration  from  Alsace-Lorraine,  amounting  to 
2,500),  and  3,684  were  from  Luxembourg — in  a  word,  60  per  cent,  of 
the  population  are  foreigners. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     235 

the  debate  of  December  1911  on  the  proposed  mining 
concessions : — 

"  When  so  many  foreigners  and  so  much  capital  come  to  our  country 
they  must  inevitably  form  a  State  within  the  State,  and  this  situation 
will  certainly  become  more  serious.  We,  the  people  of  Luxembourg, 
must  take  our  precautions,  lest  we  be  treated  as  foreigners  in  our  own 
country.  The  danger  lies  in  the  fact,  that  we  are  being  dispossessed 
of  our  country,  and,  so  to  speak,  losing  our  nationality,  owing  to  the 
intervention  of  a  foreign  industry." 

Any  observer  on  the  spot  will  understand  these  appre- 
hensions, and  his  briefest  inquiry  will  show  how  firmly 
they  are  rooted  in  fact.  He  will  discover  that  the 
members  of  the  Luxembourg  Chamber  are  besieged 
with  applications  from  the  youth  of  Luxembourg  for 
places  in  the  great  metallurgic  industries  of  the  country, 
places  which  it  is  impossible  to  obtain  because  they  are 
occupied  by  foreigners.  At  Differdange,  out  of  a  popu- 
lation of  15,000,  there  are  6,000  Germans;  yet,  owing 
to  the  German  mining  law,  many  Luxembourgeois 
have  been  obliged  to  leave  Alsace-Lorraine,  where  they 
had  been  employed  as  overseers  by  local  mining  com- 
panies. The  obligation  which  the  Luxembourg  Govern- 
ment has  imposed  on  the  concessionaires  of  mines  to 
consume  the  products  of  their  mines  in  Luxembourg 
itself,  by  the  building  of  forges  and  of  iron  and  steel 
works,  is  not  an  effective  remedy  to  this  "  evil."  The 
Minister  of  the  Interior,  M.  Braun,  calculates  that 
sixty  per  cent,  of  the  men  employed  in  the  metallurgic 
industry  of  Luxembourg  are  foreigners.1  The  popula- 
tion of  the  Grand  Duchy  has  increased  in  five  years 
by  13,436  persons,  but  out  of  the  total  number  of  in- 
habitants in  1910— 259,891— nearly  40,000  or  15*28  per 
cent,  were  foreigners.  Esch  has  grown  with  the  mush- 
room speed  of  an  American  town.  In  one  entire 
1  See  Luxembourg  Memorial,  Debate,  December  20,  1911. 


236  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

quarter  the  visitor  hears  only  Italian  spoken.  And 
with  the  growth  of  industry  the  cost  of  living  has 
immensely  increased,  while  wages  have  risen  fifty  per 
cent,  since  1894. 

From  this  startling  movement  of  "prosperity"  the 
inhabitants  have  no  doubt  reaped  a  certain  benefit, 
but  the  chief  beneficiaries  have  been  the  German  iron- 
masters, and  at  this  very  hour  the  whole  economic,  not 
to  say  political,  future  of  Luxembourg  is  in  the  balance, 
owing  to  the  efforts  of  the  famous  German  metallurgist, 
Herr  Thyssen — whose  activity,  by  the  way,  has  at  the 
same  time  been  successfully  manifested  in  Normandy — 
to  obtain  the  concession  of  all  the  mines  still  at  the 
disposal  of  the  Luxembourg  State.  The  European 
aspects  and  bearings  of  industrial  energy  of  this  admir- 
able German  kind  are,  one  would  suppose,  too  obvious 
to  be  overlooked.  The  Luxembourgeois  themselves  are 
becoming  alarmed.  They  dread  their  eventual  absorp- 
tion by  German  capital.  The  above  quoted  words  of  a 
member  of  the  Grand  Ducal  Chamber  were  subsequently 
echoed,  in  the  same  debate,  by  a  colleague  who  ex- 
claimed :  "  What  would  happen  if  our  national  interests 
were  to  find  themselves  in  conflict  with  those  of  one 
of  the  immense  German  establishments  ?  Would  there 
not  be  reason  to  fear  that  Berlin  would  exercise  pressure 
on  the  country?"  It  is  likely  that  the  Government 
of  Luxembourg  has  not  failed  to  learn  the  lesson  of 
Tangiers  and  of  Agadir.  But  it  would  be  incredible,  if, 
in  face  of  the  local  anxiety  aroused  by  the  progress  of 
Germany  in  Luxembourg,  the  Quai  d'Orsay  did  not  see 
that  a  rapprochement  with  the  Grand  Duchy  is  now 
possible.  England,  whose  interests  are  less  immediate, 
has  had  the  courage  to  favour  her  capitalists  in  their 
efforts  to  thwart  the  Germans  in  their  systematic  efforts 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     237 

to  convert  Luxembourg  into  a  Prussian  fief :  the  whole 
of  the  Grand  Duchy  is  soon  to  be  lighted  by  electricity 
produced  by  turbines  working  in  water  captured  from 
the  Sure  by  the  Science  and  Capital  of  Englishmen.  It 
is  a  first  blow  dealt  to  the  rapidly  growing  German 
domination  of  a  neutral  and  independent  State. 
France,  on  the  other  hand,  notwithstanding  the  over- 
tures of  the  Luxembourg  Government,  "still  delays  to 
take  the  only  step  which  can  effectually  restore  her 
prestige  in  a  region  that  she  should  prevent  at  all  costs 
from  becoming  germanized :  the  construction  in  the 
valley  of  the  Chiers  of  a  canal  which  shall  open  Dunkirk, 
Antwerp  and  Rotterdam  to  the  metallurgic  industry 
of  the  Grand  Duchy.  France,  which  purchases  annually 
from  Germany  some  fifteen  millions  of  tons  of  coke  for 
use  in  the  metallurgic  works  of  Longwy  and  of  Briey 
— and  which,  for  this  reason,  hesitates  to  exclude 
foreigners  from  participation  in  French  mining  con- 
cessions, lest  the  interdiction  should  be  followed  by 
reprisals — France  would  manifestly  recover  more  than 
the  disbursement  represented  by  her  dependence  on 
German  coal  should  her  Minister  of  Commerce  revive  a 
measure  which  would  be  as  welcome  to  his  own  Eastern 
compatriots  as  to  the  Luxembourg  Government.  The 
present  moment,  moreover,  is  a  critical  one.  It  is  inter- 
esting to  recall  that  the  successor  of  Kiderlen-Waechter, 
as  Secretary  of  State  for  foreign  affairs,  is  Herr  Gottlieb 
von  Jagow,  who  in  1908  was  German  Minister  in 
Luxembourg.  His  four  years  subsequently  passed  in 
Rome  will  not  have  obliterated  the  impressions  he 
gathered  in  his  quiet  post  overlooking  the  French 
Eastern  frontier.  If  France  does  not  bestir  herself  she 
will  awake  within  a  few  years  to  the  fact  that  the 
Treaty  of  Vienna  has  been  automatically  revised,  and 


238  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

that  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Luxembourg  is  no  longer  an 
independent  Power.  The  German  flag,  now  flying 
from  the  donjon  of  Hoh  Koenigsburg,  will  then  be 
hoisted  on  the  ruined  heights  of  Vianden,  in  full  view 
of  the  windows  of  the  house  where  Victor  Hugo  wrote 
L'Annee  Terrible. 

Ill 

If  ever  the  Powers,  if  ever  France,  were  forced  to 
tolerate  such  a  fact  as  this,  it  would  be  because  they 
had  failed  to  fashion  in  their  arsenals  the  only  kind 
of  weapon  which,  in  the  twentieth  century,  is  a  really 
effective  instrument  of  combat.  Trade,  no  doubt, 
follows  the  flag ;  but  more  often  the  flag  follows  trade, 
and  if  the  nations  are  awakening  to  the  fact  that  their 
autonomy  is  being  menaced  by  German  financial  initia- 
tive and  by  German  industrial  enterprise — and  it  is  not 
only  the  smaller  Powers,  Holland,  Belgium,  Luxem- 
bourg, Switzerland,  but  even  France  and  England  and 
Brazil  which  are  face  to  face  with  the  problem  of 
stemming  the  German  commercial  tide — the  fault  is 
their  own;  they  have  hitherto  neglected  to  employ 
suitable  arms  against  their  now  insinuating  now  brow- 
beating rival.  There  is  thus  a  point  of  view,  the 
detached  scientific  point  of  view,  from  which  it  is 
impossible  not  to  acknowledge  that  Germany  deserves 
all  she  has  got,  or  all  that  she  is  ever  likely  to  get. 

The  old  agrarian  Germany  has  become  a  vast  work- 
shop, dependent  on  the  foreigner  for  its  food  supplies. 
It  imports  cereals  and  other  food-products  for  one- 
seventh  of  its  population,  nine  millions  of  its  in- 
habitants. So  true  is  this  that  Herr  von  Gwinner,  the 
Manager  of  the  Deutscher  Bank,  has,  perhaps  not 
extravagantly,  said :  "  If  Germany  were  to  lose  her 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     239 

commercial  clientele,  she  would  be  obliged  to  become 
aggressive."  At  all  events  the  Germans  are  ceasing  to 
emigrate.  Germany  annually  summons  from  abroad  some 
750,000  agricultural  labourers.1  She  is  bound,  in  her 
struggle  for  life,  to  insist  on  an  open  market  in  order  to 
make  money  enough  to  purchase  the  foodstuffs  which 
she  is  unable  to  produce  at  home.  This,  no  doubt,  is 
the  secret  of  the  growth  of  her  naval  budget ;  and 
there  is  no  logical  obligation  for  the  other  nations  to 
regard  her  fleet  as  a  predestined  instrument  of  aggres- 
sion. It  is  the  great  manufacturers,  the  "  business 
interests,"  in  Germany,  who  are  most  convinced  of  the 
need  of  a  powerful  fleet.2  In  reply  to  the  British  First 
Lord  of  the  Admiralty,  they  insist  that  such  a  fleet  is 
not  a  ''luxury,"  but  a  vital  necessity.3  It  exists  for 
the  protection  of  German  trade  as  the  British  fleet 
exists  for  the  protection  of  England's  trade.  Whatever 
the  added  chances  of  international  collision  created  by 
its  growth,  the  original  motives  of  this  expansion  may 
fairly  be  ascribed  to  economic  causes  unmixed  by  belli- 
cose intent. 

One  can  admit  all  this  impartially,  and  yet  find  it  the 
more  difficult  to  account,  on  the  basis  of  this  so-called 
natural  hypothesis,  for  Germany's  refusal  loyally  to 

1  The  latest  statistics  of  the  German  Labour  Exchanges  show  that 
Russia  provided  Germany  in  1913  with  317,000  labourers,  Austria 
281,000,  Italy  69,000,  HolLond  and  Belgium  64,000,  and  Hungary 
20,000.  If  Russia  were  to  close  its  western  frontier,  Prussia  would 
be  deprived  of  300,000  labourers  absolutely  necessary  as  farm-hands. 
This  is  the  trump-card  held  by  Russia  in  view  of  the  negotiations  for 
the  renewal  of  her  Treaty  of  Commerce  with  Germany. 

8  Cf.  the  "Inquiry"  opened  by  the  Nord  und  Sud,  July  1912,  and 
note  2,  p.  278. 

3  "  The  British  navy  is  to  us  a  necessity,  and,  from  some  points  of 
view,  the  German  navy  is  to  them  more  in  the  nature  of  a  luxury." — 
Speech  by  Mr.  Churchill  before  the  Clyde  Shipbuilders. 


240 

accept  England's  recent  practical  proposal  for  diminish- 
ing the  naval  rivalry  between  the  two  Powers.  And  the 
difficulty  grows  when  the  observer  notes  that,  simul- 
taneously with  this  refusal  to  adopt  the  British  scheme 
for  parallel  and  proportionate  diminution  of  naval  power, 
Germany  votes,  immediately  after  the  conclusion  of  the 
Moroccan  arrangement  with  France,  a  sum  of  nearly 
£50,000,000  for  the  creation  of  two  new  army  corps,1 
one  of  which  is  to  be  stationed  at  Sarrebourg,  linking 
the  forces  at  Metz  and  Strasbourg,  exactly  as  though 
she  meant  to  put  in  speedy  practice  the  well-known 
plan  of  her  general  staff,  which  General  von  Bernhardi 
has  thus  bluntly  justified :  "  Germany's  object  is  to 
crush  one  of  her  foes  before  the  other  has  dreamed  of 
intervention.  In  such  tactics  as  these  lies  Germany's 
salvation."  At  the  same  time  Germany  is  increasing 
the  strategic  railways  which  lead  to  the  frontier  States2; 
she  is  widening  the  Kiel  Canal,3  and  is  zealously  seek- 
ing to  reform  the  financial  system  which  is,  perhaps,  the 
Achilles  tendon  of  her  power.  All  these  acts,  mani- 
festations, tendencies,  may  be  merely  coincidental,  and, 
in  so  far  as  they  are  the  sign  of  a  reflecting  policy,  the 
mere  indication  of  a  wish  to  render  Germany  impreg- 
nable against  attack.  But  in  presence  of  facts  so 

1  Cf.  p.  78. 

8  The  new  Malmedy-Stavelot  line  is  connected  with  the  German 
military  camp  at  Elsenborn,  and  with  Cologne,  Coblence  and  Troves. 
Another  line  parallel  to  the  Belgian  frontier  runs  south  from  Aix-la- 
Chapelle.  See  p.  197. 

3  The  extension  works  were  begun  in  1907.  The  Canal  has  already 
been  made  two  metres  deeper,  and  has  been  doubled  in  breadth,  so 
that  at  certain  points  Dreadnoughts  can  be  turned.  The  distance 
between  Kiel  and  Wilhelmshaven  for  battleship  purposes  is  reduced 
from  more  than  600  to  only  80  nautical  miles.  The  new  locks  at 
Brunsbruttel  and  Holtenau  are  the  largest  in  the  world.  Work  on 
the  Canal  still  continues. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     241 

numerous,  so  easily  admitting  of  a  contrary  interpreta- 
tion, it  is  logical  for  even  other  than  British  observers 
to  conclude  that  Germany  constitutes  a  danger  to  peace 
and  that  the  danger  lies,  as  Mr.  Balfour  said  in  the 
Nord  und  Sud  in  June  1912  :— 

"  in  the  co- existence  of  that  marvellous  instrument  of  warfare  which 
is  the  German  army  and  navy,  with  the  assiduous,  I  had  almost  said 
the  organized,  advocacy  of  a  policy,  which  it  seems  impossible  to 
reconcile  with  the  peace  of  the  world  or  the  rights  of  nations.  For 
those  who  accept  this  policy,  German  development  means  German 
territorial  expansion.  All  countries  which  hinder,  though  it  be  only 
in  self-defence,  the  realization  of  this  ideal  are  regarded  as  hostile,  and 
war  or  the  threat  of  war  is  deemed  the  natural  and  fitting  method  by 
which  the  ideal  itself  is  to  be  accomplished."1 

The  impression,  in  a  word,  is  inevitable  that  not  only 
does  the  peace  of  Europe  depend  on  Germany,  but  that 
the  prosperity  of  Germany  lies  in  her  own  hands.  If 
she  possessed  the  force  of  character  to  abandon  the 
aggressive  policy  of  the  last  ten  years  ;  if  she  could  con- 
vince herself,  and  then  convince  the  Powers,  that  the 
motives  of  her  political  action  are  peaceful,  that  she 
is  not  trying  to  dominate  the  universe ;  if  she  were  to 

1  The  origins  of  Anglo-German  misunderstanding  are  more  remote, 
however,  than  Mr.  Balfour  has  felt  called  upon  to  indicate.  Edward 
Bernstein,  the  German  Socialist,  summarizes  them  in  his  pamphlet 
on  "  The  English  Danger  and  the  German  People."  They  started, 
he  thinks,  in  1879,  when  Germany  inaugurated  a  protectionist  tariff 
system,  which  injured  British  trade.  England's  distrust  of  Germany 
was  increased  when  the  latter  began  to  develop  a  colonial  policy. 
Some  years  later,  the  situation  was  aggravated  by  the  famous  Kruger 
telegram,  followed  by  German  Anglophobia  during  the  Boer  war. 
Thereupon  Germany  hastened  the  construction  of  her  fleet.  Why  feel 
surprise,  asks  Herr  Bernstein,  if  Edward  VII  immediately  undertook 
what  has  been  called  the  encer -clement  of  Germany  ?  By  proclaiming 
herself  the  Protector  of  Islam,  Germany  continued  to  alarm  the  Mus- 
sulman powers,  and  the  whole  Moroccan  business  was  calculated,  says 
this  German  authority,  with  extraordinary  impartiality,  to  pit  the 
powers  against  Germany. 

B 


242  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

repudiate  the  majestic  dreams  of  Pan-Germanism,  the 
theories  of  the  General  Bernhardis,  she  could  quietly 
take  the  most  brilliant  and  practical  revenge  for  all  the 
humiliating  rebuffs  of  Tangiers  and  Agadir.  By  the 
employment  of  a  method  diametrically  the  opposite  of 
the  disquieting,  aggressive  attitude  she  has  chosen,  she 
could,  if  she  liked,  outstrip  all  the  Powers  in  the  accu- 
mulation of  wealth  and  in  world  expansion.  As  long  as 
Germany  remains  a  menace  to  America,  and  to  France 
and  England,  by  showing  that  she  fancies  herself 
obliged  to  oust  France  and  England  from  the  points  of 
the  globe  in  which  they  have  taken  root,  she  imperils 
her  economic  and  industrial  interests,  and,  what  is  more 
important  still,  she  makes  it  impossible  for  such  Powers 
as  England  and  France  to  follow  their  natural  bent,  the 
organization  of  a  pacific  world  society. 

It  is  doubtful  whether  France  has  gained  any  added 
military  strength  by  her  declaration  of  a  Protectorate 
in  Morocco.  She  is  probably  weakened  in  her  Conti- 
nental military  power  by  taking  possession  of  a  region 
which  for  a  generation  will  require  at  least  one  whole 
army  corps  to  police  it.1  The  Colonial  Powers  that 
have  won  so  much  territory  during  the  last  twenty 

1  In  March  1911,  France  had  12,132  men  engaged  in  Morocco.  At 
the  end  of  May  this  figure  was  almost  exactly  tripled.  Since  then  the 
rise  has  been  steady.  On  December  1, 1912,  the  French  troops  operating 
in  Morocco  were  61,609,  of  whom  1,503  were  officers.  On  February  1, 
1913,  France  had  immobilized  south  of  Tangier  63,804  men,  and  the 
item  of  Moroccan  expenses  in  the  estimates  for  1913  amounted  to 
nearly  J66,500,000.  In  May  1914,  at  the  moment  of  the  occupation  of 
Taza,  French  effectives  in  Morocco  numbered  75,000  men.  It  should, 
however,  be  instantly  noted  that  not  6,000  of  this  corps  ^occupation 
were  metropolitan  troops.  In  these  circumstances  the  Temps  is, 
perhaps,  warranted  in  affirming  (May  21,  1914)  :  "  C'est  une  mauvaiee 
plaisanterie  de  parler  toujours  d'un  des  corps  d'armee  dont  la  France 
d'Europe  est  privde  au  profit  du  Maroc."  Any  diminution  of  the 
effectives  in  Morocco  will  be  for  the  benefit  of  Algeria  and  Tunis. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     243 

years  at  the  apparent  expense  of  German  prestige, 
might  easily  be  undone  by  Germany,  whose  genius  for  a 
certain  kind  of  Colonial  expansion — a  very  practical 
kind,  and  perhaps  the  only  kind  that  tells — is  superior 
to  theirs.  It  is  perfectly  true,  as  Mr.  Norman  Angell 
says,1  that  there  are  to-day  more  Germans  in  France 
than  there  are  Frenchmen  in  all  the  Colonies  that  France 
has  acquired  in  the  last  half  century ;  and  German 
trade  with  France  outweighs  enormously  the  trade  of 
France  with  all  the  French  Colonies.  The  lat©  Prime 
Minister,  M.  Caillaux,  argued,  in  his  speech  defending 
the  Franco-German  Agreement  with  regard  to  Morocco 
and  the  Congo,  that  the  possession  of  Colonies  was  pure 
vain-glory  in  comparison  with  the  advantages  to  be 
secured  from  the  probable  international  commercial 
arrangements  of  the  future.  France  is  to-day  a  better 
Colony  for  the  Germans  than  they  could  make  of  any 
exotic  Colony  which  France  owns.  The  distinguished 
German  Socialist,  Edward  Bernstein,  points  out  in  his 
pamphlet,  "  The  English  Danger  and  the  German 
People,"  that  German  imports  into  South  Africa 
amount  to  £38,000,000,  whereas  British  imports  hardly 
reach  £4,000,000.  In  a  word,  German  expansion  is  the 
wonder  of  the  world.  Germany's  real  Colonies  are 
countries  she  has  never  owned.  German  colonizers  are 
of  the  cuckoo-race.  They  prefer  nests  built  by  others. 

The  pity  of  it  is  Germany  does  not  know  this,  or  that 
she  is  making  up  her  mind  that  others  suspect  her  of 
knowing  it,  and  are  taking  their  precautions  accord- 
ingly. Germany  is  a  parvenu  Power,  and  full  of  Pan- 
Germans  who  want  to  "  make  history,"  and  not  merely 
to  "  make  money."  Germany  deserves  our  sympathy. 

1  The  Mirage  of  the  Map.    Bulletin  of  the  American  Association 
for  International  Conciliation,  No.  53. 


244  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

She  lies  in  the  centre  of  Europe,  an  enemy — one  of 
them  mortal — on  each  hand,  the  two  Powers  of  the 
Dual  Alliance ;  and  when  she  lifts  her  eyes  from  her 
eyry  of  Heligoland  she  beholds  in  the  distance  an  island 
fortress  manned  by  men  whose  one  principle  of  inter- 
national action  has  been  to  prevent  any  single  power 
from  dominating  Europe,  and  who  are  closing  their 
Dominion  markets  to  her  trade.  She  possesses — for 
futile  ends  that  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  vital 
problems  of  economy — two  jealous  "allies";  restive 
megalomaniac  Italy,  whose  King  is  biding  his  time  to 
declare  himself  the  latest  of  the  Roman  Emperors,  and 
an  Aehrentalized  Austria  which  has  ceased  to  be  satis- 
fied with  her  role  of  a  "  brilliant  second,"  and  is  in 
patriotic  duty  bound  to  avenge  the  humiliations  entailed 
by  the  recent  Balkan  War.  In  international  relations 
Germany  is  reduced  to  a  day-by-day,  almost  a  minute- 
by-minute  policy  of  opportunism.  Forced  to  defend,  in 
Europe,  a  status  quo  based  on  the  intolerable  crime  and 
egregious  blunder  of  the  Annexation  of  Alsace-Lorraine, 
when  Italy  makes  war  on  Turkey,  and  upsets  German 
prestige  at  Constantinople,  Germany's  one  hope  is  to 
revive  Crispianism,  to  pit  France  against  Italy,  and  in 
general  to  evoke  an  Italian  nationalism  which  will 
render  her  more  necessary  to  her  Austrian  ally.  Besides 
this,  there  are  all  the  domestic  ills,  the  simmering 
unrest,  the  doubtful  social  future  overshadowed  by  the 
fundamental  contradiction  between  the  Democratic  con- 
stitution of  the  German  Empire  and  the  feudal  character 
of  the  Prussian  state.1  Moreover,  the  leaders  of  Ger- 

1  See  L' Esprit  Public  en  Allemagne,  by  Henri  Moysset  (Felix  Alcan) ; 
Les  Embarras  de  VAllemagne,  by  Georges  Blondel  (Plon);  and,  above 
all,  La  Crise  Politique  de  V Allemagne  Contemporaine,  by  William 
Martin  (Felix  Alcan).  A  significant  event  occurred  on  January  30, 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     245 

many's  foreign  policy  have  for  ten  years  raised  rash 
hopes  in  the  German  people,  and  yet  steadily  showed 
themselves  incapable  of  coping  with  the  complex  prob- 
lems confronting  them.  Meanwhile,  the  youthful  opti- 
mism of  the  plutocratic  German  oligarchy,  nourishing, 
like  the  American,  colossal  fancies,  dreams  of  improvising, 
with  the  aid  of  a  golden  wand,  a  Titanic  civilization 
superior  to  any  that  has  preceded  it.  The  Pan-German 
centaurs,  in  the  spirit  of  the  Valkyrie  out-riders,  are 
ready  to  plunge  rough-shod,  singing  their  mystic  battle 
songs  of  Commercial  Imperialism,  over  the  Gallo-Roman 
fields  on  which  they  gaze  from  the  summits  of  the 
Vosges.  Thence,  traversing  the  Atlantic,  they  are 
braving  the  Monroism  of  the  North  Americans  in  Costa 
Rica,  Guatemala,  Nicaragua,  and  in  three  great  states 
of  Southern  Brazil.  In  the  provinces  of  Santa  Catalina, 
Parana  and  Rio  Grande  do  Sul  350,000  Germans 
dominate  a  population  that  contains  not  more  than 
ten  per  cent,  of  native-born  Brazilians.  The  Germans 
occupy  there  some  8,000  square  miles.  They  are  at  last 
realizing  the  dreams  of  the  rich  bankers  of  Augsburg, 

1913,  in  the  debate  in  the  Reichstag  on  the  expropriation  of  Polish 
proprietors.  That  assembly  passed  a  vote  of  censure  on  the  Chancellor. 
He  came  forth,  no  doubt,  constitutionally  intact,  because  he  depends 
not  on  the  Reichstag,  but  on  the  Emperor,  but  the  incident  was  a  sign 
of  the  tunes.  This  is  the  first  time  the  German  Democracy  has  made 
use  of  its  new  liberty  of  voting,  after  an  interpellation,  on  a  Govern- 
ment measure.  It  will  not  be  the  last.  "  On  a  dit  jadis  :  La  France 
s'ennuie.  L'Allemagne  d'aujourd'hui  commence  a  s'ennuyer,  car  elle 
n'entend  jamais  parler  ni  d'une  initiative,  ni  d'une  volonte,  ni  d'une 
decision  de  son  gouvernement.  II  n'y  a  plus  a  Berlin  qu'un  seul 
maitre,  le  prefet  de  police.  Un  semblable  regime  peut  durer  long- 
temps,  pousse  par  la  force  d'inertie.  Mais  il  ne  repose  plus  sur  rien, 
car  la  confiance  du  peuple  s'en  est  alle"e.  Tout  est  en  transformation 
dans  ce  pays,  ...  la  fid^lite"  aussi  bien  que  1'economie  nationale  " 
(Crise  Politique  de  VAllemagne  Contemporaine  pp.  69,  70).  Cf.  p.  300, 
and  note,  p.  157. 


246  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

the  Velzers,  who,  three  centuries  ago,  purchased  from 
Charles  the  Fifth  a  vast  Venezuelan  province.1  And  it 
is  one  of  the  ironies  of  history  that,  at  the  University 
of  Harvard,  on  the  sacred  soil  of  old  Massachusetts,  one 
of  the  most  mettlesome  of  these  German  centaurs,  dis- 
guised as  a  professor  of  philosophy,  should  profit  by  the 
hospitality  accorded  to  him  to  battle  openly  against 
the  Monroe  Doctrine,  urging  the  citizens  of  the  United 
States  to  cease  their  vigilance  as  regards  the  invasion  of 
the  South  American  Continent  by  the  European.  The 
excellent  German  who  is  so  diligently  and  patriotically 
engaged  in  spying  out  the  American  Canaan  for  the 
glory  of  the  Deutschtum,  has  found  perhaps  unexpected 
allies  among  the  more  innocent  compatriots  of  Wendell 
Phillips  and  Emerson.  The  Atlantic  Monthly  contained 
recently  a  brilliant  but  specious  article  opposing  the 
fundamental  policy  of  the  United  States  on  the  question 
of  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  and  inspired  by  a  fanatical 
hostility  against  the  "  present  inhabitants  of  Latin 
America."  "Let  us  have  a  new  Pan-Germanism,"  ex- 
claimed the  anonymous  author  of  this  article,  preten- 
tiously entitled  "A  Letter  to  Uncle  Sam." 

"  Let  our  race  (sic)  get  together.  ...  If  you,  who  owe  so  much  to 
the  German  in  this  your  own  fair  land,  in  the  civilization  they  have 
brought  here.  ...  If  you  still  want  to  fight  these  splendid  people — 
who  want  to  find  expanding  room  as  you  once  sought  and  found 
expanding  room — in  order  to  bolster  and  uphold  the  wretched  travesty 
of  a  tyrannous  dictatorship  masquerading  as  a  paper  republic,  sir,  you 
have  forfeited  the  world's  respect ;  you  have  not  adjusted  yourself  to 
the  new  day ;  you  are  an  inadequate  steward  ;  you  are  a  relic  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  and  you  will  richly  deserve  the  thrashing  you  will 
surely  receive." 

Because  Germany  complains  that  the  British  Empire 
and  the  Monroe  Doctrine  are  blocking  her  expansion, 

1  See  Les  Ddmocraties  Latincs  de  VAmerique,  by  F.  Garcia- 
Calderon,  pp.  267-274. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     247 

does  England,  then,  and  do  the  United  States,  owe  her 
the  same  kind  of  "compensations"  which  she  claimed 
from  France  in  the  dark  days  of  1911  ?  This  eloquent 
pro-Teuton  —  masquerading  as  a  kind  of  German- 
American  midwife  for  an  Allemania  groaning  in  birth- 
pangs,  officina  et  vagina  gentium — proposes  that  the 
United  States  should  say  to  Germany:  "Welcome  to 
South  Brazil";  that,  at  the  same  time  Germany  should 
say  to  Great  Britain:  "Sleep  in  peace.  We  have  no 
further  need  of  your  possessions  ";  that  Germany  and 
Great  Britain  should  both  say  finally  to  the  United 
States  :  "  We  guarantee  your  status  quo  and  your  para- 
mount and  indisputable  interests  on  the  American 
hemisphere  from  Canada  to  the  Equator  ";  that  all 
should  say  to  Brazil,  and  Brazil  should  say  to  all : — 
but  that  he  does  not  tell  us ! 

It  is  obvious  that  this  writer  has  not  yet  got  at  the 
root  of  the  matter.  He  knows  that  the  economic  neces- 
sities of  a  nation  determine  its  policy ;  but  it  is  no  longer, 
as  has  already  been  made  clear,  because  Germany  needs, 
or  even  wants,  to  possess  new  territory,  as  an  outlet  for 
a  surplus  population,  that  she  constitutes  a  danger. 
On  the  contrary,  statistics  show  that  her  sons  are 
ceasing  to  emigrate,  that  her  birth-rate  is  steadily 
falling,  and  that  she  has  even  to  import  labourers 
from  abroad.  Count  Posadowsky,  Herr  von  Bethmann- 
Hollweg's  predecessor  in  the  office  of  Imperial  Minister 
of  the  Interior,  insisted  on  these  facts,  in  November 
1911,  in  an  electioneering  speech  at  Bielefeld.  Germany, 
he  argued,  "  had  already  an  enormous  territory  to  open 
up  which  would  cost  a  lot  of  money  just  when  they 
had  made  the  imperial  finances  more  or  less  balance." 
Antagonism  on  the  part  of  the  Great  Powers  to  terri- 
torial expansion  by  Germany  in  tolerable  climates  was 


248  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

as  dangerous  as  blocking  up  the  safety  valve  of  a  steam- 
engine.  "  It  was,  however,  absolutely  untrue  that 
Germany  was  at  present  over-populated  and  needed 
room  for  her  surplus  people.  The  truth  on  the  con- 
trary was  that  Germany  had  to  import  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  foreigners  to  till  German  soil  and  work 
German  mines."  She  wants  an  open  market,  and  that 
is  an  ideal,  no  doubt,  which  British  Imperial  Preference 
would  endanger.  But  more  even  than  an  open  market 
in  which  to  sell  her  goods,  she  wants  an  open  market 
from  which  to  buy  other  essential  products,  the  posses- 
sion of  which  is  to-day  a  matter  of  life  and  death  for 
her.  She  is  scouring  the  world  for  iron. 

During  the  first  ten  years  after  the  Franco-German 
War  German  industry  advanced  with  magnificent  strides, 
under  the  fostering  influence  of  the  Zollverein.1  The 
French  milliards  of  the  war  indemnity  helped  to  swell 
the  mounting  tide  of  industrial  and  commercial  expan- 
sion. When,  in  the  period  from  1880-1891,  Bismarck 
introduced  a  protectionist  system,  and  at  the  same  time 
neglected  to  create  a  colonial  empire  capable  of  becoming 
the  national  receptacle  of  the  over-production  at  home, 
he  seemed  wantonly  to  be  trying  to  arrest  the  steady 
advance  of  the  previous  ten  years.  The  neighbouring 
nations  exercised  reprisals.  The  number  of  foreign 
markets  diminished.  Yet  the  German  population  was 
rapidly  increasing.  An  industrial  crisis  ensued.  Then 
it  was  that  the  German  began  to  emigrate  in  droves. 
A  fresh  war  might  have  helped  to  solve  the  situation. 
Instead,  Germany  decided  to  alter  her  economic  policy. 
Between  1891  and  1907,  accordingly,  she  followed  the 

1  SeeBlondel:  L'Essor  Industriel  el  Commercial  du  Peuple  Alle- 
mand  (Paris,  Larose)  and  L'Allemayne  aux  abois,  by  Henry  Gaston. 
Preface  by  General  Bonnal. 


249 

system  of  signing  commercial  treaties  with  the  different 
Powers.  Prosperity  seemed  to  return.  German  manu- 
facturers once  again  launched  forth  on  what  appeared 
to  be  the  route  of  a  magnificent  future.  Now,  instead 
of  exporting  her  citizens — many  of  whom  even  returned 
from  abroad — she  lavishly  dumped  her  products  "  Made 
in  Germany"  upon  all  the  world-markets.  Nothing 
comparable  with  this  moment  of  her  national  life  had 
ever  before  been  seen,  save  in  the  United  States,  where 
the  phenomenon  of  the  daring  commercial  "boom" 
took  place  in  the  same  conditions.  France,  following 
a  policy  of  recueillement  and  caution,  both  corresponding 
to  her  needs  and  characteristic  of  her  prudent  tempera- 
ment, allowed  herself  to  fall  steadily  behind  in  the  race 
for  the  capture  of  the  world-markets,  while  Germany, 
plunging  recklessly  on,  evolved  a  system  of  financial 
and  industrial  credit  which  it  is  necessary  to  analyse  in 
order  to  comprehend  the  existing  facts  affecting  inter- 
national relations. 

The  magnificent  development  of  German  industry  has 
been  rendered  possible  by  a  flexible — but  precarious — 
banking  system.  In  Germany  the  banks,  even  the  savings 
banks — which,  in  France,  employ  their  deposits  in  the 
purchase  of  State  bonds  or  in  stable  and  well-guaranteed 
securities — scatter  their  money  broad-cast,  lending  to 
manufacturers,  discounting  bills,  or  buying  speculatively 
uncertain  shares.  In  case  of  a  "  run  "  on  a  bank  caused 
by  a  panic  it  is  not  always  easy  for  the  German  savings 
bank  to  reimburse  its  clients.  The  Pan-Germanists  dis- 
covered this  in  191 1 ,  when  they  disseminated  a  war-scare.1 

At  the  same  time  the  great  industrial  banks  felt  the 
pinch,  and  their  case  illustrated  the  inconveniences  of 

1  Cf.  Mermeix :  Chronique  de  I' An,  1911,  pp.  289-308,  6  ;  also  Let 
Grands  Marches  Financiers  (Alcan,  1912). 


250  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

the  German  system.  Germany  is  "rich,"  but  it  lives 
on  borrowed  money.  The  German  Michael  is  kept  in 
a  semblance  of  health  by  chronic  subcutaneous  injec- 
tions. French  or  American  capital  is  the  galvanizing 
drug.  Germany  home  capital  does  not  suffice  to  fill  the 
coffers  of  the  banks  that  are  constantly  being  emptied 
by  the  German  manufacturers'  and  traders'  demands 
for  advances.  The  banks  consequently  have  to  procure 
money  from  abroad,  and  they  borrow  where  they  can. 
Nowhere  in  the  world  is  there  a  larger  stock  of  available 
funds  than  in  France.  The  French  banks,  therefore, 
are  able  to  play  a  highly  advantageous  game  with  the 
German  bankers.  They  lend  their  money  at  a  good 
price ;  and  if,  when  the  loan  has  expired,  the  German 
banker  finds  it  inconvenient  to  pay,  and  wants  to  renew 
the  loan,  the  French  bank  acquiesces  and  receives  a  fresh 
commission.  This  is  normal  and  remunerative  banking 
business,  and  it  is  in  the  common  interest  that  nothing 
should  ever  occur  to  hamper  it.  But  at  a  period  of 
stress  and  strain,  of  economic  or  social  unrest,  and  above 
all  of  war-rumour,  France  can  no  longer  afford  to  lend. 
Ordinary  prudence  obliges  the  banks  to  hoard  rather 
than  disburse ;  when  the  German  asks  for  money,  the 
Parisian  banker  retorts  by  claiming  the  settlement  of 
his  loan ;  and  the  German  banker  is  forced  to  pay  his 
debts  with  real  money  instead  of  with  promissory  notes. 
The  first  and  immediate  consequence  is  that  German 
industry  is  handicapped.  If  the  tightening  is  prolonged, 
the  great  n:  ^nufacturing  and  business  enterprises  totter 
and  fall  li..e  packs  of  cards.  To  prevent  such  a  krach 
the  German  banker,  the  great  French  credit  establish- 
ments being  closed  to  him,  makes  a  desperate  appeal 
for  funds  to  the  money-kings  of  the  United  States. 
In  September  and  October,  1911,  Germany  required 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     251 

300,000,000  francs  immediately.  The  American  bankers 
saw  their  opportunity,  and  lent,  at  a  rate  of  6  per  cent, 
and  7  per  cent.,  money  which  in  normal  times  Berlin 
could  have  got  from  Paris  for  3  per  cent,  and  4  per  cent. 
That  was  the  price  Germany  had  to  pay  for  the  luxury 
of  flying  her  flag  off  Agadir. 

The  object-lesson  was  one  that  any  but  Pan-German 
eyes  could  read.  That  the  nation  as  a  whole  has  prob- 
ably learned  it  was  proved  by  the  speech  of  William  II. 
at  the  Kiel  regattas  in  June  1912,  when  he  reminded 
the  people  of  the  old  Hanseatic  principality  that  it  is 
one  thing  to  hoist  your  ensign  at  the  mast  and  another 
to  haul  it  down  with  honour.  Unfortunately,  however, 
no  experienced  observer  will  have  regarded  as  an  amende 
honorable  this  diplomatic  liquidation  of  the  humiliating 
episode  of  Agadir.  It  was,  no  doubt,  an  adroit  effort 
on  the  part  of  the  Emperor  to  make  what  the  Americans 
call  "the  best  of  a  bad  job,"  but  it  certainly  marks  on 
the  part  of  the  Prussian  masters  of  Germany  no  diminu- 
tion in  the  passion  for  world-dominion,  no  change  in 
policy ;  and  it  should  be  taken  merely  in  connexion 
with  recent  warnings  of  Herr  von  Lumm,  one  of  the 
members  of  the  Board  of  Directors  of  the  Reichsbank. 
He,  at  least,  has  drawn  the  inevitable  and  patriotic 
conclusion  from  the  events  of  1911  and  1912.  In  a 
series  of  articles  in  the  Bank  Archiv  he  reminded  the 
German  banks  that,  in  scattering  so  recklessly  the  money 
deposited  with  them,  and  in  failing  to  keep  a  stable  stock 
in  hand,  they  are  doing  their  best  to  produce  an  explo- 
sion of  financial  and  industrial  panics.  The  figures  cited 
by  Herr  von  Lumm  in  respect  to  the  speculations  on 
shifting  securities  made  at  the  Stock  Exchange  through 
the  intermediary  of  the  great  banks,  have  so  alarmed 
this  competent  observer  that  he  counsels  greater  prudence 


252  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

and  less  precipitation,  if  Germany  does  not  wish  to  find 
her  economic  evolution  hopelessly  paralysed.1 

German  industry,  German  trade,  therefore,  are  con- 
stantly checked  through  a  stoppage  of  fiduciary  circula- 
tion, a  kind  of  financial  thrombosis,  the  temporary 
damming  up  of  the  canals  of  liquid  money.  Such  are 
the  possible  disadvantages  of  the  German  credit  system. 

But  German  industry  is  exposed  to  even  greater  risks 
from  outside.  Whenever  a  world-market  is  closed  to  it, 
when  tariff  walls  are  raised  against  it,  Germany  exclaims  : 
"  We  are  being  '  encircled,'  hemmed  in."  It  never  seems 
to  occur  to  her  that  other  countries  have  the  same  "right " 
to  favour  their  own  industries  as  she  has  to  develop  hers. 
"We  claim  our  place  in  the  sun,"  she  continues,  as  if 
any  of  the  Powers  had  the  slightest  wish  to  deprive  her 
of  any  unoccupied  region  with  a  southern  aspect  which 
she  has  the  capital  and  the  initiative  to  colonize.  When- 
ever England,  the  United  States,  France  even,  have  re- 
covered in  the  world-markets  ground  of  which  they  had 
been  temporarily  deprived  through  the  splendid  campaign 
of  the  German  travelling  salesmen ;  whenever  these 
Powers  establish  trading  stations  in  regions  hitherto 
monopolized  by  the  German  manufacturer ;  when  Spain 
slowly  wakes  to  the  possibility  of  creating  her  own  public 
works  instead  of  appealing  to  German  capitalists  and 
German  engineers ;  when  any  other  country  that  had 
formerly  looked  to  Germany  for  aid  learns  to  get  on 
without  her,  the  Germans  begin  to  wonder  if  the  whole 
world  is  not  conspiring  to  throttle  their  national  life. 
Such  is  the  legend  that  has  grown  up  in  Germany,  and 
England  is  uniformly  regarded,  and  most  unfairly  re- 
garded, as  the  instigator  of  this  alleged  conspiracy. 

1  Cf.  the  articles  by  M.  Andr£  Sayous  in  the  Information,  notably 
one  published  on  June  5,  1912. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     253 

Lord  Lansdowne,  who,  with  M.  Delcasse  and  the  late 
King  Edward,  has  been  one  of  the  chief  agents  of  the 
'  Time  Spirit ''  in  giving  diplomatic  shape  to  the  present 
scheme  of  international  relations,  said  in  the  House  of 
Lords  on  February  14,  1912,  that  when  England  came  to 
terms  with  France,  in  1903  and  1904,  the  two  countries 
had  "  ample  materials  for  an  all-round  understanding," 
but  that  "there  was  no  such  array  of  acute  and  out- 
standing difficulties  between  England  and  Germany," 
for  the  excellent  reason  that  during  the  twenty  preceding 
years  one  British  Government  after  another  had  been 
settling  these  questions  as  they  arose.  That  is  to  say, 
Germany  has  no  legitimate  grievance  of  any  kind.  As  a 
Times  leading  article  had  pointed  out  two  and  a  half 
months  before  Lord  Lansdowne,  the  Anglo-German 
Agreement  of  1890,  defining  the  British  and  German 
spheres  of  influence,  not  only  in  East  Africa  but  in 
West  and  in  South-West  Africa,  and  ceding  Heligoland 
to  Germany  in  return  for  the  British  protectorate  over 
Zanzibar,  was  the  very  first  of  the  series  of  agreements 
afterwards  concluded  on  similar  lines  with  other  Powers. 
This  treaty  was  a  public  British  acknowledgment  of 
Germany's  status  as  a  Colonial  Power.  It  was  followed 
up  in  1898  by  an  understanding  which  rendered  Anglo- 
German  competition  impossible  in  the  event  of  the 
Portuguese  colonies  coming  into  the  market.  A  year  later 
England  allowed  Germany  to  hoist  her  flag  on  the  two 
most  important  islands  of  the  Samoan  group.  In  China 
in  1897  and  1900  England  continued  to  manifest  her 
sense  of  Germany's  Colonial  needs  and  "rights."  ID 
short,  up  to  the  moment  when  England  decided  to  com- 
pose her  differences  with  France,  as  well  as  with  the 
other  Powers,  by  bartering  her  Moroccan  "rights"  off 
against  the  "  rights  "  of  France  in  Egypt,  Germany  had 


254  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

never  dreamed  of  propagating  the  legend  of  a  world- 
cabal  organized  by  England  to  thwart  her  progress. 
This  legend  is  a  fiction,  but  it  is  a  fiction  that  has,  in 
the  German  brain,  to  use  the  expressive  word  of  a  French 
philosopher,  M.  Fouille,  all  the  characteristics  of  an  ide'e- 
force.  This  legendary  belief  has  resulted  in  the  German 
notion  that  the  rest  of  the  world  owes  her  something, 
that  she  must  be  bribed  to  lie  down  peaceably  in  her 
kennel;  and  to-day  no  ordinary  bone  will  satisfy  her 
appetite  for  "compensations." 

Herr  Hans  Delbriick,  a  professor  of  history  and  one 
of  the  German  mastiff's  keepers,  announced  recently1 
that  the  latest  arrangement  with  France  was  only  tem- 
porary, and  that  Germany  now  feels  justified  in  claiming 
the  Congo  Free  State,  the  Portuguese  Colonies  in  East 
Africa  (she  would  like  England  to  steal  them  for  her), 
Zanzibar,  and  what  remains  of  French  territory  between 
the  Cameroons  and  the  mouth  of  the  Congo.  If  Eng- 
land's arrangement  with  Russia  with  regard  to  Persia 
should  result  in  a  virtual  partition  of  that  country, 
Germany  must  put  in  further  claims  for  "compensa- 
tions." "The  world,"  says  Herr  Delbriick,  "will  have 
to  get  used  to  our  applying  throughout  the  world, 
wherever  there  is  a  change  of  frontiers,  exactly  the  same 
policy  that  we  employed  in  Morocco."  This  authority 
does  not  say  whether  he  looks  forward  to  this  policy 
being  employed  with  exactly  the  same  result.2  If  so, 

1  PremsiscJie  Jahrbiichcr,  March  1912. 

2  On  May  2,  1914,  the  Cologne  Gazette  published  a  Berlin  letter 
which  was  an  excellent  sample  of  the  German  point  of  view.     "All 
serious  statesmen,"  said  this  semi-official  organ,  "  are  aware  that  we 
shall  not  let  ourselves  be  eliminated  from  the  economic  competition  on 
the  various  commercial  regions  of  the  world  without  doing  the  utmost 
to  prevent  this  result.     This  lesson  was  clearly  taught  by  our  action 
in  Morocco."     The  Cologne  Gazette  went  on  to  define  the  "guiding 
principles"  of  "Neo-German  policy" — namely,  the  "delimitation  of 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     255 

perhaps  the  Powers  will  not  complain.  The  conduct,  the 
attitude,  the  manner,  and  the  manners,  of  the  Pan- 
German  are  reminiscent  of  an  ingenuous  confession  of 
one  Mr.  Goodfellow,  a  traveller  in  New  Guinea,  who 
writing  to  The  Times  on  "Modern  Men  of  the  Stone 
Age,"  said :  "  The  people  we  met  in  the  unknown  in- 
terior seemed  to  be  extremely  stupid.  We  used  to  strike 
matches  in  front  of  them,  and  do  other  things  which  we 
thought  might  interest  them,  but  they  would  not  look ; 
they  turned  their  heads  away."  Germany  of  late  years 
has  been  behaving  like  these  artless  explorers.  She 
thinks  it  clever  to  treat  other  world-tribes  as  primitive 
peoples,  and  is  constantly  trying  to  frighten  them 
with  Tartarin  roarings  or  childish  boos!  She  keeps  on 
stupidly  striking  matches  in  front  of  them,  but  they  are 
ceasing  even  to  look.  Though  the  world's  increasing 
armaments  suggest  a  return  to  savagery,  some  one  may 
yet  say  to  Germany  what  a  North  Queensland  native 
said  to  the  British  Commissioner,  Walter  Roth,  who  had 
been  trying  the  match-striking  trick.  "  Having,"  Mr. 
Roth  says,  "struck  match  after  match  before  a  crowd  of 
natives  who  showed  not  the  slightest  signs  of  surprise, 
notwithstanding  that  a  lucifer-box  was  an  absolute 
novelty  to  them,  I  asked  the  interpreter  to  discover 
what  those  primitive  children  of  nature  thought  of  the 
performance.  He  informed  me  truly  and  tersely :  '  He 
say  "  what  for  no  gib  (give)  it  he  (him)  ?"  He  say  "  you 

d fool,  throw  it  away  "  !'  ' 

Meanwhile  the  legend  of  Germany's  encerclement  by 

certain  territories  in  order  to  apply  there  German  action  in  world- 
rivalry."  In  a  word,  Germany  claims  an  indemnity  from  all  the 
nations  that  have  outstripped  her  in  securing  a  footing  as  Colonial 
Powers  in  this  or  that  corner  of  the  planet.  Such  pretensions,  as  comic 
as  they  are  pathetic,  are  to-day  the  shibboleth  of  German  policy. 


256  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

England  has  been  skilfully  used  by  the  German  Govern- 
ment as  a  pretext  for  increasing  its  naval  and  military 
power,  and  whatever  may  be  the  pacific  intentions  of  the 
Emperor,  there  is  hardly  a  speech  of  his  during  the  last 
ten  years  but  has  sedulously  watered  the  soil  in  which 
such  rank  legends  grow.  In  July  1900,  at  the  launching 
of  the  ironclad  Witlelsbach,  William  II.  eloquently  de- 
clared that  the  "  Ocean  was  indispensable  to  German 
greatness,"  and  he  defined  his  thought  as  follows : — 

"  The  ocean  teaches  us  that  on  its  waves  and  on  its  most  distant 
shores  no  great  decision  can  any  longer  be  taken  without  Germany 
and  without  the  German  Emperor.  I  do  not  think  that  it  was  hi  order 
to  allow  themselves  to  be  excluded  from  big  foreign  affairs  that  thirty 
years  ago  our  people,  led  by  their  princes,  conquered  and  shed  then- 
blood.  Were  the  German  people  to  let  themselves  be  treated  thus,  it 
would  be,  and  forever,  the  end  of  their  world-power ;  and  I  do  not 
mean  that  that  shall  ever  be  the  case.  To  employ,  in  order  to  prevent 
it,  the  suitable  means,  if  need  be  extreme  means,  is  my  duty  and  my 
highest  privilege." 

Suiting  the  acting  to  the  word,  William  II  landed  at 
Tangiers  and  began,  in  Morocco,  a  policy  which  has  not 
only  signally  failed  of  its  object,  but  has  aroused  against 
Germany  the  hostile  distrust,  the  suspicious  vigilance,  of 
the  entire  world.  Such  a  policy  of  meddlesome  aggressive- 
ness— a  policy  marked,  as  has  previously  been  said,  by 
inevitable  contradictions — trembles  like  a  panic-struck 
compass  when  the  needle  is  beset  in  turn  by  influences 
from  all  parts  of  the  horizon. 

What  is  the  most  important  of  these  influences  ? 
Allusion  has  already  been  made  to  it.  It  is  the  im- 
perious call  of  iron.  The  foregoing  analysis  of  the  in- 
ternational situation  in  Luxembourg  will  have  given 
some  idea  of  the  nature  of  German  unrest.  It  has  been 
calculated  that  by  the  middle  of  the  present  century  the 
German  iron-mines  will  be  exhausted.  Within  thirty 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     257 

years  the  same  fate  will  have  befallen  those  of  Luxem- 
bourg. When  the  iron-famine  comes,  the  vast  foundries 
and  steel  industries  of  Westphalia,  Silesia,  the  Rhenish 
Provinces  and  the  valley  of  the  Sarre  will  have  to  put 
out  their  fires.  Twenty  millions  of  Germany's  popula- 
tion will  be  driven  to  look  elsewhere  for  a  livelihood. 
Now,  the  iron-ore  deposits  which,  in  the  twentieth 
century,  are  as  indispensable  an  asset  as  corn-fields  for 
a  civilized  community,  abound  just  over  the  Franco- 
German  border,  in  the  department  of  the  Meurthe  and 
Moselle.  In  the  basin  of  Briey  there  is  iron  enough  to 
last  for  250  years ;  and  Briey  is  nearer  than  China, 
where  there  are  still  unplundered  stores  of  coal.  Ger- 
many thought  she  had  included  in  the  provisions  of  the 
Treaty  of  Frankfort  all  the  iron-mines  of  Eastern  France. 
The  invention,  in  1880,  of  the  so-called  Thomas  process, 
which  revolutionized  the  metallurgic  industry,  and  the 
discovery  shortly  afterwards  of  the  mines  of  Briey,  re- 
vealed on  French  soil  undreamed-of  sources  of  wealth 
which  became  (as  the  author  of  L'Allemagne  aux  Abois 
puts  it)  a  "  veritable  torture  of  Tantalus  "  to  the  Ger- 
mans over  the  border.  But  while  the  iron  in  France  is 
practically  inexhaustible,  coal  is  by  no  means  as  abundant. 
Most  of  the  coal  required  for  the  iron-works  of  the 
Meurthe  and  Moselle  is  imported  from  Germany.  When- 
ever the  Essen  Syndicate  in  Westphalia  chooses  to  do  so, 
it  can  starve  out  all  the  iron-masters  of  French  Lorraine. 
The  situation  is  singularly  simple.  Germany  says  to 
France :  "  Give  us  iron,  and  I  will  continue  to  give  you 
coal."  What  more  tempting  and  reasonable  basis  for  a 
commercial  Entente,  leading  up  to  a  political  under- 
standing which  would  shatter  the  agreement  between 
France  and  England,  and,  as  Germany  urges,  surrender 
to  France  and  herself  the  domination  of  the  world  ? 


258  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Franco-German  commercial,  industrial  and  financial  co- 
operation would  settle  all  Germany's  problems  for  a 
century.1     But,  alas  for  German  ambition,  the  question 
of  Alsace-Lorraine  still  remains  unsolved.     The  history 
of  France  makes  it  difficult  for  her  sons  to  regard  as 
glorious  the  fate  which  befell  Greece  when  she  was  con- 
quered  by   Rome.     The    German    mentality,   however, 
appears  to  be  lacking  in  the  delicacy  to  appreciate  such 
susceptibilities  as  these.2    Their  Government  untiringly, 
even  insolently,  goes  on   seeking  to  bribe  France  into 
financial  and  commercial  arrangements  which,  if  accepted, 
would  place  France  in  virtually  the  same  position  towards 
her  as  this  or  that  Central  American  State  occupies  to- 
wards the  great  Northern  Republic.     It  is  easy  to  show 
in  detail  the  curious  results  of  the  Agreement  of   1909, 
followed   by   a  succession    of    necessarily   unsuccessful 
efforts  to  form   unobjectionable  Franco-German  Com- 
panies for  the  exploitation  of  Morocco,  the  Congo  and 
the  Cameroons.3     Fortunately,  France  is  not  altogether 
dependent  on  Germany  for  coal.     She  may  buy  it  in 
England,  and  if  worse  comes  to  the  worst,  she  can  dig 
it  out  of  the  hitherto  unworked   mines  in  immediate 
reach  of   her  own  furnaces.     A  more  enlightened  and 
energetic  policy  on  the  part  of  her  Ministry  of  Public 
Works  would  already  have  forced  upon  the  Chamber  of 
Deputies  the  construction  not  only  of  a  Canal  through 
the  valley  of  the  Chiers,  opening  up  Dunkirk,  Antwerp 
and  Rotterdam,  but  of  the  Canal  du  Nord-Est  which  is 
to  link  the  Northern  and  Belgian  coal-fields  to  the  iron 
regions  of  Meurthe  and  Moselle.    When  France  has  done 
this,  she  will  become  for  the  first  time  commercially  in- 

1  See  note,  p.  3Q5. 

2  See,  however,  the  Declarations  of  the  German  Ambassador  in 
London,  p.  300.  3  See  p.  280  et  seq. 


A  STUDY  OP  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     259 

dependent  of  Germany,  but  she  may  have  increased 
intolerably  her  neighbour's  exasperation.  The  old 
formula  that  "a  nation  requires  the  army  and  the  fleet 
of  its  foreign  policy  "  will  meanwhile  have  to  be  altered 
to  read  :  "  A  country  requires  the  army  and  the  navy  of 
its  economic  policy  "  [see  p.  329].  Germany  requires  not 
only  French  and  American  gold  to  keep  her  credit  system 
in  working  order ;  she  requires  also  an  army  of  foreign 
clients  willing  to  buy  her  products,  and  she  will  shortly 
require  French  minerals  to  feed  her  hundreds  of  furnaces. 
"France  seems  destined,  if  all  goes  well,  to  become  the 
most  powerful  nation  of  metallurgists  in  the  world."  l 
The  invasion  of  Normandy  by  Herr  Thyssen,  who  is 
even  now  building  three  hauls  fourneaux  adjoining  the 
mines  of  which  he  has  obtained  the  concession,  and  the 
establishment  in  Meurthe  and  JMoselle  of  two  or  three 
other  German  mining  magnates,  show  what  might  happen 
if  Germany's  foreign  policy  were  not  so  blunderingly 
conducted.  Unable  to  induce  France  to  forget ;  ex- 
asperated by  her  inability  to  induce  France  to  sign  an 
alliance  with  her,  she  shows  her  teeth.  She  goes  to 
Agadir.  As  Mr.  George  Saunders,  the  Paris  correspond- 
ent of  The  Times  has  put  it,  she  agrees  to  a  friendly 
conversation,  but  on  sitting  down  she  lays  a  revolver  on 
the  table.  Meanwhile,  pending  the  moment  when  her 
armies  may  win  for  her  the  mines  of  Meurthe  et  Moselle, 
she  is  hunting  for  iron  throughout  the  world.  Writing 
on  July  18,  1911,  in  the  Daily  Mail,  Mr.  Frederic 
William  Wile,  the  Berlin  correspondent  of  that  paper, 
said : — 

"  The  Mannesmanns'  mining  activities  in  Morocco  are  said  to  be 
inspired  by  the  necessity  of  assuring  the  German  steel  and  iron  industry 

1  L'Allemagne  aux  Alois,  p.  85. 


260  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

new  sources  of  ore  supply.  There  is  alleged  to  be  genuine  concern 
over  the  diminishing  supply  in  German  mines.  Great  firms  like  the 
Krupps,  of  Essen,  "  King"  August  Thyssen  and  Matthias  Stinnes,  the 
uncrowned  potentates  of  Rhineland-Westphalia,  are  associated  with 
the  Mannesman ns  in  the  Moroccan  ventures,  and  between  them  make 
up  the  25  per  cent,  of  German  interest  in  the  Union  des  Mines 
Marocaines  which  figures  so  conspicuously  in  the  Moorish  turmoil. 
The  Krupps,  Thyssens  and  Stinneses  are  also  heavily  interested  in 
steel  mills,  iron  mines,  and  transportation  projects  affecting  their 
industry  in  Scandinavia  and  Russia,  and  have  even  established  them- 
selves in  French  Normandy."1 

There  are,  no  doubt,  many  indications  that  the  Ger- 
man rulers  may  eventually  come  to  regard  a  war  as  the 
sole  solution  for  the  life  and  death  economic  problems 
with  which  they  are  confronted.  France,  England  and 
the  United  States  appear  to  Germany  to  be  blocking 
her  way.  The  nature  of  the  sole  solution  that  can 
maintain  the  peace  of  Europe  has  already  been  stated. 

1  For  the  details  of  the  German  metallurgists'  dreams  in  Morocco 
see  M.  Andr£  Tardieu's  "  Le  Mystere  d'Agadir."  A  succinct  statement 
of  German  operations  in  Normandy  was  given  in  The  Times  in  October 
1912 :  "  Negotiations  between  the  French  concern  Etablissements  Cail, 
and  the  Gewerschaft  Deutscher  Kaiser  in  Bochum  have  resulted  in  the 
formation  of  the  Societe  des  Hauts  Fourneaux  et  Acieries  de  Caen, 
with  30,000,000f .,  for  the  purpose  of  erecting  and  working  a  large  plant, 
to  include  two  blast  furnaces  having  a  yearly  output  of  200,000  tons  of 
pig  iron,  and  to  be  fitted  with  a  complete  gas-purifying  plant.  The 
scheme  contemplates  also  the  provision  of  rolling  mills  for  the  manu- 
facture of  sheets,  sections,  and  merchant  bars,  and  of  coke  ovens  with 
apparatus  for  the  recovery  of  by-products.  The  company  have  acquired 
a  site  extending  over  an  area  of  350  hectares  situated  in  Herouville 
and  Colonbelles  (near  Caen).  The  ore  is  to  be  ob tamed  from  the  mines 
of  Soumont  and  Perrieres,  worked  by  the  Societe"  des  Mines  de  Soumont, 
and  an  electric  railway  35  km.  long  will  be  constructed  to  convey  it  to 
the  works.  The  works  are  to  be  connected  with  a  site  on  the  sea  coast 
where  important  developments  are  contemplated,  and  it  is  expected 
that  they  will  thus  be  situated  favourably  in  regard  to  the  exportation 
of  the  finished  products  and  the  importation  of  fuel." 

There  is  as  yet  no  mention  of  the  establishment  of  a  German  coaling 
station. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     261 

Germany  must  find  some  means  of  convincing  the 
Powers  of  the  purity  of  her  intentions.  She  must  cease 
her  bluff  and  her  bluster ;  she  must  become  convinced 
that  no  nation  in  the  world  is  capable  of  contemplating 
an  attack  on  her ;  she  must  seek  some  outlet  for  that 
juror  teulonicus  invoked  by  a  former  minister  of  war, 
General  von  Einen,  in  his  Detmold  speech,  and  she 
must  cease  to  propagate  at  home  the  Nietzschean  forms 
of  mystical  and  metaphysical  imperialism,  that  faith  in 
the  divine  right  of  brute  force  which,  inherited  from 
Bismarck,  inspires  the  oratory  of  her  pan-German  depu- 
ties, her  press,  and  her  capricious  diplomatic  action. 
Sir  Edward  Grey  excellently  described  the  present  situa- 
tion when  he  declared  that  if  German  policy  really 
aimed  solely  at  rendering  Germany  powerful,  and  not 
aggressive,  "  within  two  or  three  years  every  chance  of 
war  would  have  disappeared."  1  The  German  Emperor, 
who  has  in  his  veins  a  goodly  proportion  of  French 
blood,  should  take  to  heart  the  lines  of  Corneille :  Ne 
veuillez  point  vous  perdre,  et  vous  serez  sauves  / a 

1  "  Briefly,  the  object  for  Germany,  if  she  desires  to  make  an  end  of 
the  Anglo-German  contention,  is  to  convince  us  that  she  is  not  aiming 
at  a  European  hegemony  in  which  we  shall  be  the  next  victim  after 
France  is  disposed  of."  The  Foundations  of  British  Policy,  by  J.  A. 
Spender,  p.  84. 

*  The  German  Emperor  counts,  perhaps,  on  the  economic  "salva- 
tion "  of  his  country  through  the  medium  of  the  Diesel  engine,  destined 
to  render  the  steam-engine  archaic.  The  invention  of  the  Augsburg 
engineer  consumes  not  only  crude  oil  but  coal  tar.  It  is  claimed, 
therefore,  that  it  will  prove  to  be  a  means  for  the  utilization  of  coal 
much  more  economical  than  in  the  past :  when  coal  is  entirely  con- 
verted into  coke  and  coal-tar,  the  resulting  economic  progress  will 
relegate  the  steam-engine  to  the  Museums  of  Applied  Arts.  Thus 
Germany,  abundantly  provided  with  coal,  need  no  longer  dread  the 
future.  But,  by  the  same  token,  England,  whose  coal-supplies  are 
even  richer  than  those  of  Germany,  will  be*  able  to  maintain  a  steady 
economic  advance. 


262  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

IV 

The  foregoing  analysis  of  the  plight  growing  out  of 
Germany's  industrial  situation  and  of  her  perilous  bank- 
ing system,  is  one  which  suggests  as  many  arguments 
to  the  apostles  of  peace  as  to  the  most  pessimistic  of  the 
prophets  of  war.  The  facts  adduced  might  be  used  to 
illustrate  the  remarks  of  Mr.  Norman  Angell  in  his 
brilliant  lecture  read  before  the  Institute  of  Bankers  on 
January  17,  1912  :  "  With  the  freedom  of  communica- 
tion in  every  sense  that  now  exists  in  the  world,  it  has 
become  a  material  impossibility  to  prevent  French 
money  aiding  German  trade  in  one  form  or  another  "; 
just  as  they  could  be  made  to  point  the  moral  of  the 
utterance  of  M.  Jaures,  in  the  French  Chamber  of 
Deputies,  on  December  20,  1911 : — 

"The  international  action  of  the  capital  in  the  hands  of  the  great 
bankers  constitutes  a  formidable  new  power,  which,  if  it  is  not  con- 
trolled by  opinion,  if  it  is  not  controlled  by  Governments  independent 
of  it,  if  it  is  not  controlled  by  enlightened  and  autonomous  Democracies, 
may  prostitute  pretexts  of  peace  to  miserable  combinations,  but  which, 
if  it  is  enlightened,  controlled,  supervised  by  great  nations,  independent 
and  proud,  may,  at  certain  moments  in  the  unstable  equilibrium  of  the 
world,  add  to  the  chances  of  peace." 

Yet  the  same  set  of  facts  might,  perhaps,  with  even 
greater  force,  be  employed  to  controvert  the  whole  main 
contention  of  these  two  seers.  It  is  owing  to  the  devices 
of  banking,  they  argue,  that  two  countries  like  France 
and  Germany  are  able  to  divide  their  labour  according 
to  their  characteristics,  one  country  being  a  maker,  and 
the  other  a  user,  of  capital :  "  The  very  stagnation  of 
France,  which  set  free  this  capital,  is  precisely  the  factor 
which  makes  it  impossible  for  Germany  to  crush  her." 
But  the  stagnation  of  France  does  not  necessarily  pre- 
vent Germany  from  trying  to  crush  her.  Such  stagna- 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     263 

tion  is  no  guarantee  against  the  possibility  that  a  peace- 
ful German  Government,  however  profoundly  convinced 
of  the  economic  soundness  of  a  thesis  like  that  of  Mr. 
Norman  Angell,  may,  at  some  moment  of  international 
friction,    be   driven   to   make  war  in  response  to  the 
clamours  of  a  population  grossly  misinformed  as  to  the 
hostile  intentions  of  this  or  that  foreign  power  or  set 
of  powers,  or  mortified  beyond  endurance  by  such   a 
series  of  diplomatic  rebuffs  as  the  German  people  have 
had  to  endure  of  late,  notably  during  the  summer  and 
autumn  of   191 1.1     For  ten  years,   moreover,   German 
amour-propre  has  been  in  a  constant  state  of  irritation. 
The    dramatic    resignation    of    the    German   Colonial 
Minister,  Herr  von  Lindequist,  after  refusing  to  sign 
a  treaty    exchanging  Germany's  magnificent   hopes  of 
Moroccan   mines   and    an   Atlantic   port   for   what    he 
called  "  the  marshy  and  malaria-haunted  regions  of  the 
Congo,"   was   almost   a  reflex   action  symbolizing  the 
disgust  of  the  German  people  with  their  rulers.     At  the 
signal,  an  immense  wave  of  foaming  chauvinism  swept 
over  the   country.      This    patriotic    movement,   which 
forced  the  Government  to  increase  the  naval  and  mili- 
tary estimates,  immensely  reinforced  the  authority  of 
the  Pan-Germanist  Association,  of  the  Naval  League 
and  of  the  German  Colonial  Society.     In  other  words, 
the  German  Government  is  pacific,  but  German  opinion 
bellicose — because  the  Government  has  been  blundering 
for  ten  years.     For  a  century  and  a  half  Europe  has 
been  endeavouring  to  deprive  Kings  and  Governments 
of  the  right  to  make  war  and  peace.     Philosophers  and 
historians  have  argued  that  it  was  owing  to  the  ambi- 

1  Compare,  moreover,  the  risks  of  war  during  November  and 
December,  1912,  owing  to  the  excited  state  of  Austrian  public  opinion 
in  connexion  with  Servian  pretensions  to  annexing  a  strip  of  the 
Adriatic  coast-line. 


264  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

tions  of  kings  and  the  intrigues  of  courtiers  that  peace- 
loving  nations  had  had  to  go  to  war  against  their  will. 
This  is  the  burden  of  the  battle-song  of  the  Interna- 
tionale ;  and  it  has  been  thought  that  with  the  coming 
of  an  era  in  which  war  should  depend  on  the  people's 
will,  peace  would  prevail  throughout  the  world.  But 
what  answer  is  given  by  events  ?  If  Turkey  has  lost 
Tripoli  it  is  because  the  warlike  enthusiasm  of  a  new 
nationalistic  Italy  has  forced  the  hand  of  her  Govern- 
ment. It  was  the  warlike  temper  of  Bulgarian,  Servian, 
Greek  and  Montenegrin  public  opinion,  not  the  bellicose 
spirit  of  the  Balkan  Governments,  that  mobilized  the 
Balkan  peoples  against  Turkey  in  the  autumn  of  1912. 
In  Germany,  not  merely  the  Opposition,  but  the  Press 
have  constantly  reproached  the  Government  for  its 
pusillanimity.  That  public  opinion  upon  which  M. 
Jaures  counts  to  "control,"  to  temper,  the  action  of 
the  international  bankers,  cannot  even  "  control  "  itself. 
The  steadying  influence  of  la  haute  finance,  of  finance 
in  general,  is  certainly  all  that  it  is  represented  to  be ; 
but  such  peaceful  influence  as  it  exerts  is  exercised,  in 
our  time,  almost  solely  upon  Governments.  In  presence 
of  the  rise  of  a  sudden  gust  of  chauvinistic  passion, 
Governments  will  be  forced  into  line  at  the  head  of  the 
self-maddened  mob,  and  the  philosophers  in  the  van 
will  have  to  advance  with  the  rest.1 

1  No  crescendo  of  conventional  votes,  leading  up  to  an  ultimatum 
in  accordance  with  the  rules  of  the  game  of  war,  as  prepared  by  the 
Professors  of  International  Law,  warned  the  world  that  Japan  intended 
to  open  hostilities  against  Bussia,  or  that  Italy  intended  to  take  Tripoli. 
None  will  temper  the  force  of  the  shock  when  Germany  decides  to  fall 
upon  France.  As  M.  Rene  Pinon  says  (Revue  dea  Deux  Mondes,  June  1, 
1912,  pp.  619,  620) :  "  The  only  premonitory  indication  of  war,  in  our 
Democratic  epoch,  is  the  temper  of  public  opinion.  When  a  nation's 
pulse  beats  at  the  fever  cadence,  when  its  blood  is  boiling  and  the  whole 
organism  shivers  and  trembles,  the  danger  is  near.  At  such  psycho- 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     265 


It  is  not  only  by  the  scrutiny  of  the  mechanism  of 
German  industrial  and  financial  organization  that  the 
hidden  springs  of  European  peace  and  war  are  laid  bare. 
It  has  been  pointed  out  that  France,  following  a  policy 
of  recueillement  and  caution,  both  characteristic  of  her 
needs  and  characteristic  of  her  prudent  temperament, 
has  allowed  herself  to  fall  steadily  behind  in  the  race 
for  the  capture  of  the  world-markets.  It  is  necessary  to 
develop  this  remark  in  detail. 

A  writer  signing  himself  "Lysis,"  who  has  published 
two  books,  Contre  I'Oligarchie  Financi&re  en  France  and 
Les  Capitalistes  Franqais  contre  la  France,  has,  for  the 
last  few  years,  conducted  a  courageous  campaign  with  the 
object  of  enlightening  Frenchmen  as  to  the  risks  of  their 
own  admirable  credit-system.  He  aims  at  a  reform  of 
the  existing  financial  organization  of  France,  and  his 
undertaking  has  already  borne  fruit.  It  is  significant 
that  an  ex-minister  of  Finance  of  the  experience 
and  authority  of  M.  Caillaux  —  who,  whatever  his 
occasionally  misguided  activity  during  the  negotiations 
of  1910  with  Germany,  has  proved  his  practical  know- 
ledge of  the  mechanism  of  French  society  to  be  that 
of  a  competent  specialist — should  have  ventured,  how- 


logical  moments  in  the  life  of  a  people,  arguments  based  on  Constitu- 
tional Law  have  no  longer  any  hold,  and  Governments  become  powerless 
to  arrest  the  impulses  of  the  nation.  The  epoch  of  the  old  politique 
des  Cabinets  has  gone  by,  and  the  best  diplomatist  to-day,  is  he  who 
is  able  to  penetrate  the  deep-lying  intentions  of  the  peoples  and  to 
divine  their  spontaneous  impulses."  If  M.  Pinon  had  written  these 
words  after  the  Balkan  Wars  of  1912  1913  he  would  have  been  tempted 
to  print  them  in  italics. 


266  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

ever  guardedly,  to  corroborate  certain  of  the  views  of 
"  Lysis  "  1:— 

"Gentlemen,"  he  said,  "tell  your  representatives  to  consider  the 
question  of  the  organization  of  industrial  and  commercial  credit,  I 
mean  of  that  credit  which  ought  to  be  at  the  disposal  of  the  small 
shopkeepers  and  the  small  manufacturers,  and  which  is  at  present 
doled  out  to  them  so  parsimoniously.  A  good  deal  has  been  written 
of  late  on  the  economic  and  financial  organization  of  France.  There 
has  been  violent  criticism  of  the  system  of  exportation  of  French 
capital,  without  reflecting  that  a  large  portion  of  our  economic  and 
political  force  abroad  is  due  to  the  fact  that  we  are  perhaps  the  biggest 
money-lenders  in  the  whole  world.2  .  .  .  These  criticisms  were  dictated 

1  In  a  speech  delivered  on  January  9,  1911,  at  Lille. 

2  M.  Caillaux  forgets,  or  neglects  to  mention,  that  while  readiness 
and  capacity  to  lend  money  to  Foreign  Powers  increases  the  "  political 
force"  and  the  diplomatic  prestige  of  a  State  during  the  period  prior 
to  the  conclusion  of  a  loan,  the  lending  State,  once  the  operation  is 
concluded,  becomes,  to  a  large  degree,  the  slave  of  the  borrowing 
nation,  and  is  placed  in  a  position  of  dependency  that  hampers  its 
future  diplomatic  action.     Moreover,  as  Lysis  says :  "  Foreign  loans 
are  not  productive  ;  they  do  not  serve  to  develop  the  wealth  of  the 
borrowing  peoples,  but  to  cover  the  costs  of  military  preparations.  .  .  . 
Bad  for  the  borrowers,  the  operation  is  full  of  risks  for  the  lenders. 
Two  thousand  millions  of  francs  of  Rumanian,  Bulgarian  and  Servian 
securities  are  quoted  on  the  Paris  Bourse,  the  greater  portion  of  which 
is  in  French  hands.    We  have  thus  an  immense  amount  of  capital 
engaged  in  the  most  dangerous  corner  of  Europe,  exposed  to  the  chances 
of  war,  of  domestic  strife,  of  political  revolutions  and  of  bad  crops." 
This  is  a  kind  of  fact  that  might  no  doubt  be  utilized  by  the  Norman 
Angells  and  the  Jaureses  to  support  their  argument  as  to  the  pacific 
influence  of  cosmopolitan  capital,  but  it  is,  at  the  same  time,  obviously 
as  legitimate  ground  for  anxiety  to  those  Frenchmen  who,  realizing 
that  the  counter- influences  making  for  war  are  immensely  preponderant, 
reflect  with  dismay  what  is  to  become  of  their  exported  savings  when 
war  breaks  out,  suddenly  involving  States,  great  or  small,  in  which 
their  capital  is  engaged.     In  the  first  week  of  the  Balkan  Scare  of 
October  1912,  an  unwarrantable  panic  fell  upon  the  Paris  Bourse, 
whereas,  in  1911,  when  France  was  on  the  eve  of  war  with  Germany, 
the  French  money  market  remained  calm.     The  depreciation  of  the 
securities  quoted  on  the  Paris  Bourse  ranged  from  five  to  twenty  per 
cent.,  yet  French  and  German  financial  interests  as  regards  Balkan 
Questions  were  identical  in  kind.     Writing  in  June  1907  in  the  Eevue 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     267 

by  the  sentiment  that  in  France  the  small  shopkeepers  and  business 
men  have  inadequate  facilities  for  obtaining  long  credit.  In  our 
country,  if  a  manufacturer,  who  is  at  the  head  of  a  moderate  business 
representing,  for  instance,  200,000  or  300,000  francs,  wishes  to  develop 
it,  while  giving  full  guarantees  as  to  business  capacity,  the  only  way 
of  procuring  the  requisite  capital  is  to  appeal  to  private  individuals. 
Save  in  exceptional  cases  no  banking  organization  exists  to  provide 
him  with  capital,  and  the  situation  is  worse  still  in  the  case  of  the 
small  shopkeeper  or  the  small  manufacturer  whose  business  represents 
a  sum  of  10,000,  20,000  or  50,000  francs.  The  conclusion  to  be  drawn 
from  these  incontestable  facts  is  not  the  necessity  of  altering  existing 
conditions,  but  the  necessity  of  creating  some  new  supplementary 
institution.  Besides  the  existing  establishments  of  credit,  which  should 
continue  their  present  activity,  there  ought  to  exist  organisms  the  sole 
object  of  which  should  be  to  assist  small  business  men,  small  manu- 
facturers. .  .  .  Various  types  of  local  banks  should  be  created,  bolstering 
up  a  central  bank." 

des  Deux  Mondes,  M.  Jacques  Siegfried  described  the  exodus  of  French 
capital  as  "  a  veritable  new  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes  in  the 
domain  of  Economics,"  and  called  upon  the  Government  to  remedy 
"  this  distressing  fact."  The  question  is  discussed  in  all  its  bearings  by 
M.  Andre  Cheradarne,  in  his  remarkable  book  La  Crise  Franfaise.  In 
the  Correspondant  (January  25, 1912)  this  writer,  with  reference  to  the 
futile  efforts  made  by  the  Austro- Hungarian  Government  to  negotiate 
in  Paris  a  loan  of  100,000,000  francs,  to  be  quoted  on  the  Paris 
Bourse,  shows  that  if  the  attempt  failed,  it  was  because  of  the  sound 
intuitions  of  French  public  opinion,  as  manifested  in  the  Press,  and 
not  at  all  because  of  the  prudent  policy  of  the  Government.  M.  Chera- 
dame  concludes  that  collusion  between  French  finance  and  French 
diplomacy  is  indispensable.  He  suggests  that  before  French  financiers 
agree  to  lend  money  to  a  Foreign  State  they  should  first  advise  the 
Quai  d'Orsay,  in  order  to  learn  whether  the  principle  of  the  contem- 
plated operation  is  in  harmony  with  French  foreign  policy.  After  a 
favourable  reply,  but  only  after  such  a  reply,  they  may  come  to  terms 
with  the  Foreign  State.  The  necessity  of  some  such  permanent 
mechanism  as  this  has  now  become  generally  recognized  in  France. 
The  echo  of  this  altered  public  opinion  was  heard  in  the  last  words  of 
the  ministerial  declaration  of  the  late  French  Government.  M.  Poin- 
care  said  that  the  policy  of  his  Government  was  to  "  reconcile,  as  twin 
and  convergent  forces,  the  financial  power  which  was  of  such  great 
assistance  to  France,  with  her  military  and  naval  power."  In  Octo- 
ber 1912  he  applied  this  principle  in  virtually  prohibiting  French 
bankers  from  lending  money  to  Bulgaria,  but  later  on,  when  Bulgaria 


268  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

And  M.  Caillaux  went  on  to  extol  the  utility  of  the 
Japanese  Industrial  Bank,  and  to  urge  the  adoption  of 
a  similar  institution  in  France  "  in  order  to  arouse  the 
spirit  of  private  initiative."1 

The  question  of  private  initiative  and  of  individual 
responsibility  is,  indeed,  one  of  the  most  urgent  of  all 
questions  for  the  Frenchmen  of  to-day.  The  authori- 
tative character  of  the  Napoleonic  political,  legal  and 
social  traditions,  which  have  been  codified  by  the 
French  Constitution,  French  laws  and  French  customs, 
is  utterly  unlike  the  undisciplined  individualism  char- 
acterizing Anglo-Saxon  institutions.  Furthermore,  the 


was  successful,  it  would  appear  that  this  prohibition  was  withdrawn. 
One  of  the  ablest  journals  in  Europe,  L' Information — the  very 
existence  of  which,  by  the  way,  is  a  sign  of  the  rapidly  increasing 
interest  taken  by  the  French  people  in  financial,  economic  and  political 
questions — has  of  late  published  many  remarkable  studies  by  such 
authorities  as  MM.  Andr£  Sayous,  Alfred  Neymarck,  Alexis  Rostand, 
on  themes  which,  ten  years  ago  even,  would  have  attracted  no  general 
attention  :  "  French  Savings  and  Financial  Education,"  "  The  Reform 
of  the  Banking  System  with  reference  to  the  organization  of  credit  for 
small  industries  and  small  shopkeepers,"  "  The  Admission  of  Foreign 
Securities  to  the  Stock  Exchange,"  etc.  The  commercial  expansion 
of  France  is  a  fact  with  which,  more  and  more,  Germany  and  England 
will  have  to  reckon.  It  is  shown  later  on  (pp.  272-275)  that  this 
revival  will  not,  perhaps,  turn  out  to  be  an  unmixed  good  for  the 
country. 

1  Less  than  a  year  later  (December  1912)  M.  Klotz,  the  Minister  of 
Finance  in  the  Poincare  Cabinet,  brought  in  a  bill  embodying  all  of 
M.  Caillaux's  proposals.  In  the  Preamble  M.  Klotz  pointed  out  that, 
notwithstanding  certain  advantages  that  had  accrued  to  trade  and 
industry  from  the  exceptional  banking  concentration  in  France — 
notably  the  maintenance  of  the  rate  of  discount  at  a  low  level — this 
concentration  had  unfortunately  resulted  in  the  disappearance  of 
numerous  local  banks,  and  small  merchants  and  manufacturers  had 
thus  been  deprived  of  the  financial  support  on  which  they  had  formerly 
been  able  to  count.  The  Klotz  bill,  which  is  open  to  serious  criticism 
(see  the  article  by  M.  Andre  Sayous  in  L' Information  of  Feb- 
ruary 11,  1913),  is  before  the  French  Parliament. 


problems  with  which  French  civilization  has  to  deal 
are  almost  exactly  the  opposite  of  those  confronting 
civilization  in  the  United  States,  or  even  in  England 
and  the  Dominions.  Individualism,  which  has  made 
America,  and  is  still  running  riot  there,  has  little  action 
in  French  affairs.  But  what,  for  the  moment,  is  sig- 
nificant is  that  just  as  American  financial  institutions 
are  the  reflection  of  American  individualism,  so  French 
financial  institutions  are  the  product — and  the  incentive 
—  of  French  conservatism,  French  bourgeois  spirit, 
French  dislike  of  responsibility. 

It  is  worth  while  considering  the  point  somewhat 
curiously.  It  may  safely  be  affirmed  that  the  establish- 
ments of  credit  have  immensely  increased  that  tendency 
to  thrift  which  characterizes  the  average  Frenchman 
and  which  is  partially  due  to  the  provisions  of  the 
French  testamentary  law.  The  Depopulation  Com- 
mission of  the  Ministry  of  the"  Interior  has,  indeed, 
passed  more  than  one  resolution  for  a  reform  of  the 
French  Civil  Code  permitting  French  citizens  to  make 
wills  which  shall  reconcile  the  two  natural  human  ambi- 
tions, the  desire  to  survive  in  one's  property,  and  the 
desire  to  survive  in  one's  posterity.  In  France,  for 
more  than  a  century,  the  law  has  forced  French  fathers 
to  choose ;  and,  as  Dr.  Jacques  Bertillon  points  out, 
they  have  uniformly  made  the  choice  which,  from  the 
purely  economic  standpoint,  was  most  injurious  to  their 
country's  interests.  To  preserve  the  property  they  have 
sacrificed  the  race.1  M.  Arsene  Dumont,  the  author  of 

1  The  statistics  are  conclusive.  The  birth-rate  has  decreased  in 
France  since  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century.  During  the 
last  ten  years  the  decrease  has  been  accelerated.  (It  is  during  this 
period  that  the  financial  regime  of  France  has  become  oligarchic.)  It 
should  be  said,  however,  that  the  German  birth-rate  is  almost  as  un- 
favourable. In  1911  the  falling  off  in  the  growth  of  the  population  in 


270  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Natalite  et  Civilisation,  insists  on  the  direct  relation 
between  the  French  system  of  not  having  more  than 
two  children  and  French  love  of  economy. 

"  Economy,"  he  says,  "  is  the  cause  of  the  limitation  of  the  French 
population.  .  .  .  The  wealth  of  France  is  merely  economized  money. 
But  is  a  nation  really  rich  if  it  hoards  its  pennies  in  coffers  or  in 
woollen  stockings  ?  Isn't  it  richer  if  it  disposes  of  its  money,  if  it 
uses  it  for  some  business  or  industrial  enterprise  ?  The  Frenchman 
is,  of  all  peoples,  known  to  me,  not  excepting  the  Spaniard,  the  one 
possessing  the  least  spirit  of  enterprise.  The  French  millionaire,  as 
well  as  the  French  peasant  and  working  man,  has  but  one  desire :  to 
economize,  and  above  all  not  to  risk  his  money." 

Dr.  Jacques  Bertillon,  who  is  of  the  same  opinion, 
cites  his  authorities  to  show  that  the  ideal  of  thrift  and 
economy  of  the  French  bourgeoisie  has  become  that 
formulated  by  one  of  its  teachers,  the  Bible  of  the 
French  school,  La  Fontaine :  Un  tiens  vaut  mieux  que 
deux  iu  r auras.  "  The  ideal  of  France  was  formerly 
incarnated  by  the  knight,  it  is  to-day  personified  by  the 
functionary  and  the  pensioner."  Dr.  Bertillon  suggests 
that  this  evolution  may  be  due  to  the  fact  that  the  wars 
of  the  First  Empire  cut  off  the  bravest  and  most  adven- 
turesome Frenchmen  without  leaving  them  the  time  to 
found  a  family,  and  thus  left  to  the  infirm  the  task  of 
carrying  on  the  race — hence  the  relative  rarity  of  ener- 
getic characters  and  the  predominance,  as  a  national 
characteristic,  of  an  excessive  prudence.  But,  apart 
from  the  fact  that  an  observer  like  Balzac  had  excellent 
reasons  for  holding  the  view  summed  up  in  the  phrase 

Prussia  and  Bavaria  together  was  more  than  100,000.  The  Prussian 
Government  has  organized  an  inquiry.  Voluntary  restrictions,  arti- 
ficial infecundity,  are  the  real  causes  of  the  decline  of  the  birth-rate  in 
all  countries.  But  the  question  is,  what  are  the  causes  that  favour 
the  adoption  of  certain  practices  ?  Is  the  ground  particularly  favour- 
able in  France  ? 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     271 

les  coeurs  furent  alors  (during  the  Napoleonic  epopee) 
nomades  comme  les  regiments,1  France  can  adduce  im- 
pressive facts — the  energy  and  initiative  of  her  explorers, 
the  enthusiasm  and  courage  of  her  aviators,  the  moral 
and  physical  health  of  the  present  younger  generation, 
the  incomparable  spectacle  afforded  by  the  Dreyfus 
Case  and  the  resiliency  of  the  nation  in  1905,  1910, 
and  1913,  under  the  pricking  of  the  German  goads2 — 
to  show  that  the  chivalrous,  magnanimous,  daring, 
adventurous  France  of  the  Crusaders,  of  the  seventeenth- 
century  colonizers  and  of  the  soldiers  of  the  Revolution 
and  the  Empire,  is  still  more  even  than  in  being.  It  is 
to  that  France  that  allusion  has  already  been  made  in 
the  earlier  pages  of  this  book.  If  for  a  long  period 
there  has  been  an  enfeeblement  of  the  spirit  of  enter- 
prise, consequent  on  habits  of  excessive  thrift,  it  is 
mainly,  no  doubt,  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  fact  that, 
after  her  defeat,  France  for  a  long  period  necessarily 
remained  a  stunned  and  bewildered  nation,  and  that 
when  she  woke  out  of  this  condition  of  apathy  it  was  to 
find  herself  called  upon  to  lay  the  foundations  of  a  new 
society  before  she  could  indulge  in  the  luxury  of  cherish- 
ing her  old  dreams ;  but  it  is  also  to  be  accounted  for 
by  the  slow  but  fatal  action  of  the  French  Civil  Code  in 
its  stipulations  concerning  the  disposition  of  property 
and  regulation  of  marriage,  and  the  enervating  parallel 
influence  of  the  great  institutions  of  credit,  which,  after 
having  canalized  French  savings  into  their  vast  central 
reservoir,  have  used  those  savings  for  the  sole  ends  of 
cosmopolitan  finance,  instead  of  employing  them  to 
irrigate  French  soil  and  to  encourage  French  industrial 
and  economic  initiative.  After  having  succeeded  in 

1  La  Paix  du  Menage. 

*  Cf.  La  Renaissance  de  I'Orgueil  Francois,  by  Etienne  Rey. 


272  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

altering  the  French  law  of  inheritance,  the  French 
Society  known  as  L'Alliance  Nationale  pour  FAccroisse- 
ment  de  la  Population — which  is  only  one  of  the 
admirable  associations  now  endeavouring  to  solve  the 
problem  of  French  race-suicide — would  do  well  to  turn 
its  attention  not  so  much  to  the  revision  of  the  fiscal 
laws  of  France  (the  principle,  for  instance,  of  propor- 
tioning taxation  to  the  size  of  families)  as  to  the  further- 
ing of  the  natural  French  expansiveness  and  spirit  of 
initiative.  Every  extraneous  influence  tending  to  stifle 
that  expansiveness  and  that  initiative  should  be  ruth- 
lessly destroyed.  Such  an  influence  of  repression  would 
seem  to  be  the  peculiar  activity  of  the  French  financial 
oligarchy,  and  Parliamentary  intervention  is  required 
to  determine  the  limits  of  that  activity  and  to  supple- 
ment the  existing  credit  establishments  by  a  financial 
system  which  will  tend  to  develop,  and  not  throttle,  the 
spirit  of  energy  and  of  responsibility. 

In  pleading,  however,  for  the  direction  of  French 
activity  towards  the  development  of  economic  and 
industrial  interests  ;  in  counselling  a  systematic  effort 
to  use  French  initiative  for  the  cultivation  of  the 
natural  resources  of  France,  and  for  the  fructification 
on  French  soil  of  the  prodigious  savings  of  the  French 
people,  the  student  of  French  Institutions  should  not  be 
blind  to  the  curiously  interesting,  almost  paradoxical, 
fact  that  it  is  largely  because  France  is  so  backward  in 
economical  and  industrial  development  that  she  enjoys 
to-day  a  relative  social  and  political  tranquillity,  where- 
as England,  Germany,  Austria-Hungary,  Japan  and 
the  United  States  are  racked  by  a  spirit  of  revolutionary 
unrest.  France  is  sadly  behind  the  times  ;  her  industry, 
her  public  works,  her  business  and  her  commercial 
habits  are  not  "  up-to-date  "  ;  and  this  backwardness, 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     273 

no  doubt,  marks  a  serious  economic  inferiority  com- 
pared with  the  industrial  activity  of  her  neighbours  and 
rivals.  Yet  it  is  just  this  inferiority  which,  perhaps, 
accounts  in  a  measure  for  her  relatively  greater  social 
stability  ;  which  explains  why  her  people  are  to-day  the 
most  "conservative"  and  the  least  revolutionary  under 
the  sun ;  which  finally — and  this  chiefly  concerns  the 
subject  in  hand — enables  her,  owing  to  her  ready  money, 
her  immediately  accessible  reserves,  to  contemplate  with 
comparative  equanimity  the  possibility  of  having  to 
wage  war.  This  point  is  so  important  that  it  should 
be  put  more  explicitly. 

The  present  critical  condition  of  the  modern  State  is 
so  universal  that  more  than  one  writer1  has  certainly 
been  justified  in  comparing  it  with  the  no  less  universal 
unrest  of  1848.  Republics,  Constitutional  Monarchies, 
Empires,  Despotisms,  Parliamentary  Regimes  are  one 
and  all  suffering  from  a  kind  of  locomotor  ataxy,  and 
so  deep-seated  is  the  disorder  that  the  political  writers 
and  the  juris-consults  who  still  discuss  the  questions 
once  so  beautifully  dealt  with  by  Montesquieu,  are  like 
a  band  of  Sagrados  who  should  undertake  to  cure  a 
victim  of  St.  Vitus'  dance  by  painting  his  face.  This 
crisis  of  the  modern  State  is,  in  its  essence,  an  economic, 
not  a  political  crisis.  Questions  of  changing  the  form 
of  government  may  arise  in  connexion  with  it  and 
characterize  its  evolution,  but  such  questions  are  of 
slight  importance  in  comparison  with  the  essential  point, 
that  of  the  organic  economy  of  the  community.  The 
present  crisis  is  of  the  nature  of  a  struggle  between  the 
upper  middle  class,  la  bourgeoisie  who  possess,  the  beati 

1  See  Alexander  D.  Noyes,  article  "  Politics  and  Prosperity," 
published  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly ;  and  Paul  Louis,  "La  Crise  de 
1'Etat  uioderne,"  Mercure  de  France,  April  1,  1912. 

T 


274  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

possidentes,  the  aristocratic  and  privileged  few  in  power, 
and  the  "people,"  the  proletariat,  who,  to  a  large 
degree  without  property,  are  yet  the  producers  of 
wealth,  and  who  consequently  regard  themselves  as  les 
desherites.  The  democratic  laic  masses  have  ceased  to 
•'  clamour  in  the  desert  "  for  equality  of  privilege,  and 
are  rapidly  inventing  the  most  ingenious  engines  of 
savage  warfare  against  Established  Things :  humani- 
tarian idealism,  liberty,  irreligion ;  or  instruments  of 
assault  from  without :  syndicalism,  "  direct  action," 
sabotage.  It  is  a  duel  to  the  death  between  the  con- 
servative Social  Forms  based  on  property  and  the 
Revolutionary  Coalitions  (syndicats)  that  are  gradually 
disciplining  the  mass  of  producers.  And  behold  the 
result  in  France  !  France  is  the  country  which  contains 
the  largest  number  of  property-owners ;  it  is  the  classic 
realm  of  thrift ;  it  is  the  corner  of  the  globe  where  the 
land  is  most  equally  divided,  where  the  bas-de-laine  is 
always  darned,  where  the  pitcher  of  the  Danaids  is  a 
constantly  replenished  jar  of  wine.  Such  industrialism 
as  has  taken  root  on  French  soil  has  of  course  produced 
the  same  kind  of  friction  as  the  clash  between  capital 
and  labour  has  brought  about  in  other  parts  of  the 
world.  But  industrialism,  business  initiative,  have 
been  less  characteristic  of  modern  France  than  of  the 
German  Empire,  of  England  and  of  the  United  States. 
The  comparatively  greater  diffusion  of  property  in 
France,  and  the  simpler  economic  and  industrial  organ- 
ization, have  kept  her  people  "backward";  but  these 
very  causes  have,  at  the  same  time,  determined  her 
conservatism,  for  they  have  counterbalanced  the  revo- 
lutionary spirit  engendered,  in  France  as  elsewhere,  by 
the  tyranny  of  the  privileged  class  in  possession  of 
authority  and  property.  France,  indeed,  has  invented, 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS    275 

and  become  the  propagator  of,  Syndicalism  (as  she 
always  invents,  because  she  thinks  quickly,  and  because 
she  has  a  gift  for  large  clear  ideas) ;  but  Syndicalism  is 
less  applicable,  one  might  almost  say  less  needed,  in  her 
case  than  in  that  of  the  other  modern  States.  Yet,  true 
as  this  is,  it  may  be  argued  that  Syndicalism  is  more 
needed  in  France  than  elsewhere,  since  at  a  time  of 
social  disintegration  (when  religious  scepticism,  political 
and  financial  scandals,  parliamentary  frivolity  and 
general  irresponsibility  are  corroding  the  sentiment  of 
respect)  the  tyrannical  discipline  of  Syndicalism  may 
be  the  one  element  capable  of  transforming  French 
individualism  into  an  instrument  of  altruistic  action, 
pending  the  economic  adjustments  of  the  society  of  the 
future.  The  dictatorial  demagogues  who  founded 
Syndicalism  may  all  unwittingly  have  been  rendering 
a  singular  service  to  the  ideal  of  Social  order.1 

1  A  similar  suggestion  has  been  made  by  an  astute  realist,  the  late 
Minister  of  War  in  the  Poincare  Cabinet,  M.  Millerand.  Interviewed 
by  the  Paris  correspondent  of  the  Neue  Freie  Presse  on  the  question 
of  the  abolition  of  standing  armies  in  consequence  of  modern  social 
evolution,  M.  Milleraud  expressed  the  view  that  any  such  result  would 
be  disastrous  for  the  Eepublic.  "  Compulsory  education  in  neutral 
schools,  the  unbridled  liberty  now  rife,  freedom  of  speech  and  of  the 
press,"  he  said,  "have  made  us  a  people  in  constant  intellectual 
ferment,  who  run  the  risk  of  having  all  the  elementary  rules  of  any 
established  social  order  utterly  obliterated  in  our  souls.  Amid  this 
atmosphere  of  complete  liberty,  in  this  chaos  of  confused  ideas,  the 
army  intervenes,  giving  our  children  the  sense  of  discipline  and 
sacrifice  without  which  man  is  an  incomplete  being.  .  .  .  Tlie  slow 
work  of  organization  now  proceeding  will  l-e  greatly  furthered  by 
the  development  of  Syndicalism."  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  the 
French  Minister  of  War  did  not  develop  this  idea.  If  he  had  done  so, 
it  is  likely  that  he  would  have  explained  himself  in  language  resemb- 
ling that  used  recently  by  Mr.  Norman  Angell  in  a  series  of  suggestive 
articles  on  "The  Labour  Unrest,"  published  in  the  Daily  Mail 
(May  30,  1912).  He  said:  "The  expression  of  these  new  tendencies 
is  not  likely  to  be  revolutionary.  .  .  .  The  revolutionary  who  has 
'  arrived '  is  compelled  to  realize  that  society  is  an  organism  —  a 


276  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 


VI 

The  reader  who  has  made  his  way  through  the  some- 
what obscure  tangle  of  the  foregoing  exposition  of  two 
contrasted  financial  and  economic  organizations  will 
perceive  that  he  has  now  reached  a  clearing  in  the  heart 
of  the  subject. 

It  has  been  shown  that,  given  the  utterly  dissimilar 
"states  of  mind"  of  Germany  and  of  France,  the 
diplomatic  methods  and  machinery  of  the  two  Powers 
are  bound  to  be  correspondingly  different.  Cherishing 
different  ideals,  wanting  different  results,  the  two 
countries  have  a  different  mentality.  It  is  not  merely 
that  mutual  comprehension  is  necessarily  hindered  by 
the  reciprocal  distrust  due  to  the  dismemberment  of 
France.  Quite  apart  from  their  skeleton  in  the  closet 

thing  which  is  alive  and  grows  ;  and  even  if  his  view  is  more 
mechanical  than  this  and  he  regards  its  organization  as  a  machine, 
it  is  a  machine  which  has  to  be  perpetually  in  motion.  Now,  a 
machine  which  has  to  be  kept  in  motion  cannot  be  altered  radically 
by  a  rough  blow  here  and  there,  and  the  alteration  of  one  wheel  alters 
others  which  there  was  no  intention  to  touch.  More  and  more,  for 
instance,  is  it  the  case  in  any  great  strike  that  it  is  the  working  classes 
which  pay  the  piper.  In  the  British  coal  strike  it  was  not  the 
capitalist  who  suffered  most.  In  the  French  railroad  strike  it  was  not 
the  bourgeoisie  who  was  most  distressed,  but  the  working  men  in  other 
trades  deprived  of  their  work  in  a  quarrel  which  did  not  directly 
concern  them.  A  '  class  war  '  in  which  your  own  side  in  every  battle 
suffers  more  than  the  enemy  is  one  doomed  to  failure  from  the  start. 
As  has  been  said,  the  general  strike  is  a  very  powerful  weapon — 
with  which  to  commit  suicide. 

"  And  the  same  forces  which  doomed  the  general  strike  to  failure 
doom  to  faihire  also  the  predatory  schemes  of  forcible  confiscation  and 
dispossession  of  which  we  used  to  hear  in  connexion  with  plans  of 
social  reorganization  a  good  deal  more  than  we  do  now.  "Wealth  in 
the  modern  world  cannot  be  seized  and  transferred  in  this  simple 
fashion  ;  it  is  not  in  the  nature  of  a  fixed  or  tangible  quantity  at  all ; 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     277 

there  exists,  between  modern  Germany  and  France,  a 
lack  of  imaginative  sympathy  due  to  radical  differences 
of  temperament.  Any  successful  diplomatic  conversa- 
tion between  them  presumes,  on  the  part  of  both,  a 
long  preliminary  effort  to  place  themselves  temporarily 
at  a  point  of  view  for  which  no  past  experience  has  pre- 
pared them.  While  France  is  still,  in  the  conventional 
civilized  way,  loyal  to  the  appeal  of  great  principles, 
respectful  of  accepted  ideals  of  international  law,  and 
of  recognized  notions  of  justice,  and  correspondingly 
indifferent  to  the  purely  material  aspects  of  any  prob- 
lem, to  the  concrete  value  of  the  elements  in  a  diplo- 
matic bargain,  Germany,  the  great  modern  parvenu 

it  is  dependent  upon  the  maintenance  of  certain  functions ;  stop  them 
and  the  wealth  disappears — there  is  none  to  seize.  And  all  these  con- 
fiscatory  schemes  involve  the  stoppage  of  some  vital  function.  Those 
who  have  some  knowledge  of  the  work  of  the  world — its  processes  and 
necessary  conditions — know  such  schemes  to  be  childishly  impractic- 
able. And  every  day  makes  them  more  so.  ...  The  permanent 
element  of  Syndicalism,  which  means  the  drift  of  real  power  from  a 
large  general  body  possessing  no  special  competences,  like  Parliament, 
to  bodies  like  trade  unions  organized  for  special  industrial  functions, 
will  not  necessarily  be — will  almost  certainly  not  be  marked  by 
revolutionary  processes."  Cf.  p.  128  et  seq.  Mr.  Norman  Angell  may 
be  right.  The  fact  remains  that  in  July,  1914,  10,000  workmen  at  the 
arsenal  at  Woolwich  went  out  on  strike  in  order  to  force  the  Director 
of  the  Arsenal  to  reinstate  a  workman  who  had  been  dismissed  because 
he  had  refused,  as  a  trade-unionist,  and  at  the  order  of  his  union,  to 
co-operate  with  certain  non-unionists  engaged  temporarily  by  the 
Director.  A  member  of  the  Labour  Party  in  Parliament  championed 
the  cause  of  the  strikers  and  blackmailed  the  Prime  Minister,  Mr. 
Asquith,  into  reinstating  the  mutinous  workman,  and  thus  capitulating 
to  the  tyranny  of  the  Syndicalists.  The  incident  is  typical  of  the  time. 
It  is  the  more  interesting  as  on  June  18,  at  Swansea,  the  "  National 
Union  of  Railwaymen  "  proclaimed  the  "  Triple  Alliance  "  concluded 
between  that  body,  the  "Miners'  Federation,"  and  the  "Transport 
Workers'  Federation."  The  members  of  these  unions  number  some 
1,500,000  men,  who  claim  to  represent  a  class  apart  in  the  nation,  and 
to  dictate  their  decisions  to  Parliament. 


278  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Power,  bereft  of  all  deep-rooted  historical  traditions, 
unrestrained  by  precedent — save  that  of  the  original 
sin  of  Alsace-Lorraine — has  been  able  to  put  herself 
abreast  of  the  time,  and  adopt  the  methods  best  fitted 
to  a  period  dominated  by  economic  interests.  "What 
has  a  policy  of  partial  understanding  and  of  business 
profit  to  do  with  the  Treaty  of  Frankfort?"  said  Herr 
von  Kiderlen-Waechter,  the  German  Foreign  Minister, 
to  a  French  journalist,  M.  Georges  Bourdon.1  "  Cannot 
France  cherish  her  hopes  in  her  heart,  without  refusing 
to  participate  in  the  general  life  of  the  time ;  and, 
above  all,  when  economic  problems  are  paramount,  are 
historical  quarrels  (sic)  to  dominate  the  necessary  de- 
velopment of  nations?"  Many  Germans  lack  a  sympa- 
thetic imagination,  and  it  is  owing  to  this  lack  that 
German  diplomacy  has  become  almost  exclusively  a  diplo- 
macy of  mercantile  bargaining.2  Emperor,  Chancellor, 

1  Le  Figaro,  August  6,  1912. 

2  There   are  occasional  exceptions.     Cf.  the  utterances  of  Prince 
Lichnowsky  cited  on  p.  300.     Even  a  Prince  Lichnowsky,  however, 
will  not  disdain  to  profit  by  the  results  of  an  enterprise  so  interesting 
as  that  to  which  the  Berlin  correspondent  of  The  Times  alluded  as 
follows  in  a  telegram  dated  February  23,  1914  :  "  A  new  '  Weltwirt- 
schaftliche  Gesellschaft '  was  founded  here  yesterday  which  will  study 
the  history  and  conditions  of  the  world's  commerce  and  the  advance 
of  Germany's  commercial  interests  abroad.     At  first  sight  its   aims 
seem  much  the  same  as  those  of  the  '  Association  for  World  Trade,' 
which  is  to  be  founded  next  Thursday  under  the  auspices  of  Herr 
Ballin  ;  but,  at  present  at  any  rate,  it  is  stated  to  be  quite  distinct 
from   that  society.     Its   committee  was,  however,  recommended   to 
maintain  contact  both  with  the  association  and  with  a  new  '  Institute 
for  Sea  Traffic  and  World  Commerce  '  which  was  founded  last  Friday 
at  Kiel  in  the  presence  of  Prince  Henry  of  Prussia  and  a  large  number 
of  naval  officers.     The  organization  of  all  these  societies  is  still  rather 
obscure,  but  they  are  all  undoubtedly  the  outcome  of  a  fresh  movement 
towards  commercial  and  possibly  even  naval  expansion.     An  important 
feature  of  the  movement  is  the  attempt  to  secure  greater  influence 
over  the  foreign  Press.     The  society  founded  yesterday  starts  only 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     279 

Reichstag,  have  one  and  all  been  forced,  no  doubt,  in 
spite  of  themselves,  to  become  the  spokesmen  of  German 
industrial  and  commercial  interests.  At  the  centenary 
of  the  firm  of  Krupp,  at  Essen,  the  Emperor  William 
delivered  one  of  his  characteristic  speeches. 

"The  history  of  the  firm,"  he  said,  "is  a  piece  of  Prussian  and 
German  history.  .  .  .  Krupp  guns  have  been  with  the  Prussian  lines 
and  have  thundered  on  the  battlefields  which  made  ready  the  way  to 
German  unity,  and  won  it  at  last.  .  .  .  Services  rendered  to  the 
Fatherland  in  war  and  peace  have  won  for  this  firm  an  especial 
position  in  my  State,  and  for  three  generations  brought  its  proprietors 
and  their  families  into  a  relation  of  friendship  and  confidence  with  my 
ancestors  and  myself." 

Again,  when  in  a  disaster  at  the  Bodium  mines,  scores 
of  men  are  swept  away  by  choke  damp,  the  Emperor 
adds  his  tribute  of  mourning  to  the  expression  of 
German  sympathy,  and  describes  the  miners  as  the 
German  "coal  army  corps."  The  protection  of  in- 
dustrial and  commercial  interests  is  the  main  motive 
of  Germany's  agitated  activity,  her  capricious  oppor- 
tunism, her  frequently  unaccountable  aggressiveness, 
her  Shylockian  insistence  on  the  pound-of-flesh  "  com- 
pensation." England,  for  a  time,  notably  in  the 
strenuous  days  of  the  colonization  of  the  Niger,  seemed 
to  be  providing  Germany  with  an  excellent  precedent 

with  a  capital  of  .£1,000,  but  German  trade  and  industry  are  to  be 
asked  for  further  subscriptions.  Its  acting  President  said  that  the 
society  was  not  '  political '  and  that  its  aim  was  theoretic,  while  that 
of  the  association  will  be  practical.  It  appears,  however,  from  the 
Press  and  last  night's  speeches  that  the  society's  aims  are  eminently 
practical.  It  is  to  work  with  other  societies  '  to  arouse  the  nation's 
understanding  for  world  economics,  and  to  make  it  ripe  for  world 
politics.'  Both  the  Colonial  Office  and  the  Admiralty  sent  representa- 
tives. The  Admiralty  representative  said  that  the  Admiralty,  as  the 
administrator  of  a  Far  Eastern  Protectorate,  was  particularly  interested 
in  the  society,  which  must  make  it  its  chief  task  to  enlighten  the 
public  as  to  the  future  of  the  Chinese  market."  Cf.  p.  373. 


280  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

for  the  employment  of  certain  forms  of  national  in- 
solence. But  the  British  principle  that  "business  is 
business  "  has  never,  even  in  England,  been  allowed  to 
become  the  sole  principle  of  diplomatic  action ;  where- 
as competence  in  international  business  has  become 
for  Germany  the  unique  qualification  of  her  foreign 
agents.  Nothing  is  more  characteristic  of  modern 
Germany  than  the  career  at  Constantinople  of  a 
Marschall  von  Bieberstein,  and  the  sole  object  of  that 
ambassador's  transfer  to  London  was  to  "do  business  " 
with  a  people  whose  business  education,  excellent  as 
it  is — and  superior  as  it  has  been  to  that  of  the  French 
— has  never  been  systematically  enough  applied  to 
diplomacy  to  justify  the  hope  of  success — for  British 
interests — in  any  Anglo-German  negotiation.  France, 
at  last,  has  learned  the  lesson  of  the  spectacle  of  Ger- 
many's agitation:  she  has  "found  Germany  out," 
although  she  has  had  to  pay  dear  for  the  finding. 
When  the  French  senator,  M.  Pierre  Baudin,  was  called 
on  to  draw  up  the  report  of  the  Senatorial  Committee 
on  the  Franco-German  Agreement  of  November  4,  1911, 
he  pointed  the  moral  of  the  long  tension  between  the 
two  countries  as  follows : — 

"The  Germans,"  he  said,  "  are  accustomed  to  seeing  their  diplomacy 
act  the  part  of  permanent  agent  of  the  national  industry.  This  is  the 
kind  of  aid  they  expect  of  their  diplomacy.  They  look  to  it  not  only 
for  the  discovery  of  business  opportunities,  not  only  to  begin  negotia- 
tions, but  also  for  such  unflinching  protection  as  shall  exercise  pressure 
on  all  rivals,  and  feel  no  hesitation  at  the  idea  of  conferring  a  privilege. 
French  traditions  and  moeurs  are  altogether  different.  They  have, 
unfortunately,1  removed  us  for  too  long  a  period  from  the  great 
economic  struggles  that  are  now  going  on  throughout  the  world." 

French  traditions  and  moeurs  are,  no  doubt,  under- 
going  a   change.     They  are  harmonizing  to-day  with 

1  This,  as  has  been  seen  (p.  271  ei  seq.),  is  a  debatable  point. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     281 

the  general  current  of  things.  But  M.  Pierre  Baudin 
would  like  to  see  French  diplomatists  less  timid,  less 
discreet,  and,  in  a  word,  better  informed,  smarter 
business-men. 

The  history  of  the  relations  between  France  and 
Germany  during  the  last  three  years  perfectly  illustrates 
the  truth  so  clearly  enunciated  by  M.  Pierre  Baudin, 
and  should  be  studied  in  detail  by  the  public  men  of 
every  country.  That  history,  moreover,  is  an  admir- 
able instance  of  the  fact  that  behind  the  fa9ade  of 
Governments  financial  considerations  are  determining, 
with  increasing  frequency  and  power,  the  policies  of 
States.  In  January  1912  a  Prime  Minister  of  France, 
M.  Caillaux,  was  hunted  out  of  office  and  exposed  to 
obloquy,  for  more  reasons  than  one ;  but  one  of  these 
reasons  was  that  he  had  ventured  to  interpret  to  the 
letter  the  Agreement  which  a  preceding  minister, 
M.  Pichon,  had  made  in  1909  with  Germany.  By  that 
Agreement,  Germany  for  the  first  time  acknowledged 
the  preponderance  of  French  political  rights  in  Morocco ; 
but  in  the  spirit  of  the  do  ut  des — the  donnant,  dormant, 
"  business  is  business,"  principle  of  modern  diplomatic 
bargaining  —  she  demanded  an  equivalent.  France 
promised  to  co-operate  with  her  in  Morocco,  frankly 
and  consecutively,  in  purely  economic  matters.1  Unfortu- 
nately, however,  there  are  no  such  things  in  the  modern 
world  as  "  purely  economic  "  matters.  Economic  pre- 
ponderance, when  long  assured,  inevitably  takes  the 
shape  of  political  domination,  and  the  French  negotia- 
tors of  the  Franco-German  Agreement  of  1909  ignored 
this  fact,  and  forged,  thereby,  the  first  link  of  a  chain 

1  Textually,  the  two  Governments  declared  "qu'ils  chercheraient 
a  associer  leurs  nationaux  dans  les  affaires  dont  ceux-ci  pourraient 
obtenir  Penterprise." 


282  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

of  consequences  which  was  sure  to  bind  them  in  the 
end  to  the  car  of  German  hegemony.  The  former 
Prime  Minister  of  France,  M.  Raymond  Poincare,  who, 
as  first  reporter  of  the  Senate  Committee  on  the  Franco- 
German  Agreement  of  1911,  had  had  access  before 
taking  office  to  all  the  documents  concerning  the  efforts 
of  successive  French  Ministers  to  apply  the  Agreement 
of  1909,  declared  frankly  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies, 
on  March  15,  1912,  that  "France  in  1909,  in  1910,  and 
in  1911,  honestly  endeavoured  to  carry  out  the  Agree- 
ment of  1909";  but,  he  went  on,  "  elle  s'est  heurtv'e  a 
des  obstacles  multiples  .  .  .  et  lorsqu'on  a  tente  d'elargir 
I' application  de  cette  entente  economique  et  de  Vetendre 
au  reste  de  I'Afrique,  .  .  .  on  a  rencontre  tantot  des  com- 
plications financier es  imprevues,  tantot  des  oppositions 
parlementaires  inevitables. ' ' 

If  the  Agreement  of  1909  had  been  loyally  observed 
during  a  period  of  five  years  the  Triple  Entente  would 
have  been  shattered,  and  shattered  against  the  will 
of  three  nations.  England  would  have  been  betrayed 
— unintentionally — by  France,  and  isolated  in  Europe, 
while  Germany  would  finally  have  realized  her  dream 
of  achieving  a  predominance  that  should  neutralize 
the  results  of  French  and  English  policy  during  the 
last  ten  years :  the  restoration  of  the  balance  of  power 
in  Europe.  The  method  of  solving  the  Moroccan 
difficulty  adopted,  in  1909,  by  the  French  Foreign 
Office,  was  a  method  involving  political  consequences 
which  neither  France  nor  England  perceived  at  the 
time  (see  Speech  of  M.  Pichon,  February  8,  1912).  The 
Agreement  of  1909  had  seemed  an  effective  device  for 
neutralizing  German  political  hostility,  and  only  a  few 
perspicacious  observers  saw  in  it  a  first  successful  move 
on  the  part  of  Germany  to  fulfil,  by  a  round-about,  but 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     283 

effective,  method,  her  fixed  purpose  of  destroying  the 
Entente  between  France  and  England,  and  the  economic 
subjection  of  both  peoples.  England  acquiesced  with- 
out apparent  apprehension  in  an  Agreement  which 
seemed  to  make  solely  for  the  peace  of  Europe,  and 
France  proceeded  loyally  to  carry  out  that  Agreement, 
to  the  letter,  as  well  as  in  the  spirit.  The  consequences 
of  France's  loyal  action  are  full  of  suggestion. 

Franco-German  economic  co-operation  became  the 
chief  preoccupation  of  the  Quai  d'Orsay,  not  merely  in 
Morocco,  but  also  in  Central  Africa  and  the  Middle 
East.  International  trusts  for  the  working  of  Moroccan 
mines,  and  for  the  building  of  public  works  in  Morocco, 
were  negotiated  in  conditions  conforming  with  the 
spirit  of  the  Agreement  of  1909,  but  singularly  disad- 
vantageous to  the  interests  of  the  Powers  who  were  not 
partners  to  that  Agreement.  In  the  same  blind  spirit 
of  good  faith,  successive  French  Ministers  for  Foreign 
Affairs  proposed  to  extend  the  application  of  the  new 
entente  policy  with  Germany  to  regions  beyond  the 
limits  of  Morocco.  In  July  1909  M.  Pichon,  acting, 
as  he  believed,  in  the  interests  of  European  peace,  yet 
supposing  himself  to  be  still  following  the  main  lines  of 
French  foreign  policy,  suggested  to  the  great  French 
colonial  company  of  Ngoko-Sangha  the  advisability 
of  a  consortium  with  the  German  Company  of  the 
Southern  Cameroons  for  the  common  development  of 
the  frontier  region.  The  French  Company  accepted, 
and  negotiations  were  begun.  They  were  formally 
concluded  some  eighteen  months  later  in  M.  Pichon's 
private  room  at  the  Quai  d'Orsay,  in  presence  of  the 
German  Ambassador  and  of  high  officials  of  the  French 
Colonial  Office.  About  two  months  afterwards  the 
Briand-Pichon  Government  fell  without  having  sub- 


284  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

mitted  this  project  to  Parliamentary  ratification.  The 
Government  that  succeeded,  that  of  M.  Monis,  refused 
to  adopt  the  plan  of  a  consortium  of  French  and 
German  Companies ;  and  in  response  to  the  natural 
protests  of  the  German  Government,  the  French  Prime 
Minister  sought  to  tranquillize  German  susceptibilities 
by  casting  about  for  a  fresh  scheme  of  Franco-German 
co-operation.  The  "fresh  scheme"  was  soon  found. 
Early  in  the  summer  of  1910,  French  and  German 
financiers,  acting  on  behalf  of  French  and  German 
ministers,  began  the  friendly  discussion  of  a  project 
for  the  construction  of  a  railway  traversing  the  terri- 
tories of  the  German  Cameroons  and  of  the  French 
Congo,  and  having  its  terminus  on  German  soil.  The 
scheme,  as  presented  to  the  French  Foreign  Minister, 
M.  Cruppi,  by  the  French  Minister  of  Finance  and  the 
French  Minister  of  the  Colonies,  MM.  Caillaux  and 
Messimy,  would  inevitably  have  laid  open  to  the  political 
influence,  and  no  doubt  to  the  political  preponderance, 
of  Germany,  the  basins  of  the  Sangha,  the  Ubangui 
and  the  Chari.  M.  Cruppi  rejected  the  project,  and,  at 
the  same  time,  without  asking  the  permission  of  Ger- 
many— who,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind,  had  repudiated, 
by  the  Agreement  of  1909,  all  claim  to  political  rights 
on  Moroccan  territory — he  had  induced  the  Govern- 
ment of  which  he  was  a  member  to  send  an  expedition 
to  Fez.  A  new  Government,  that  of  M.  Caillaux,  suc- 
ceeded, and  M.  de  Selves  became  Minister  for  Foreign 
Affairs.  The  German  Government,  which  had  thus 
witnessed  the  failure  of  each  successive  project  for 
economic  and  commercial  co-operation  with  France, 
concluded  that  such  co-operation  could  be  best  secured 
by  more  active  measures,  and  sent  to  Agadir  the  gun- 
boat Panther.  When  France  finally  asked  her  what 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     285 

she  meant  by  this  act,  she  replied :  Compensations  ; 
and  thereupon  began  the  international  tension  of  the 
summer  of  1911,  the  tragic  weeks  when  the  dogs  of  war 
were  heard  baying  in  all  the  kennels  of  Europe.  Out 
of  this  period  of  tension  was  to  come  the  Franco-Ger- 
man Treaty  of  November  4,  1911.  France,  by  that 
diplomatic  instrument,  in  return  for  a  virtual  protec- 
torate of  Morocco,  ceded  to  Germany  vast  regions  of 
the  Congo,  regions  which,  but  for  the  consequences  of 
the  misguided  arrangement  of  1909,  she  need  never  have 
given  up.  In  other  words,  M.  Caillaux  was  hounded 
from  office  partially  for  reasons  which  those  who  ap- 
proved of  the  agreement  of  1909  were  logically  bound  to 
repudiate.1  The  incident  shows  that  the  qualifications 

1  See  Le  Mystere  d'Agadir,  by  M.  Andr£  Tardieu,  pp.  72-73,  et passim. 
Every  page  of  this  remarkable  book,  by  one  of  the  sanest  and  most 
perspicacious  students  of  politics  and  diplomacy  of  the  present  day, 
confirms  the  author's  view  that  the  Agreement  of  1909 — in  facilitating 
the  realization  of  German  economic  Imperialism  to  the  detriment  of 
the  legitimate  ambitions  of  the  other  signatories  of  the  Act  of  Algeciras, 
and  to  the  virtual  nullification  of  the  French  claims  to  positive  pre- 
dominance in  Morocco — was  an  incredible  blunder  on  the  part  of  the 
Quai  d'Orsay.  When  M.  Jules  Cambon  and  Baron  de  Schoen  signed 
that  Agreement,  they  signed  at  the  same  time  the  potential  death- 
warrant  of  the  Triple  Entente ;  they  dug  a  mine  and  filled  it  with 
explosives  under  the  sole  diplomatic  instrument — the  Act  of  Algeciras 
— guaranteeing,  at  the  time,  French  political  supremacy  in  North- 
West  Africa ;  and  not  a  day  passed  between  1909  and  the  arrival  of 
the  Panther  at  Agadir,  without  aggravating  the  consequences  of  the 
mistake  of  the  French  Foreign  Office.  In  this  connexion  it  is  note- 
worthy that  M.  Andre  Tardieu,  whose  influence,  as  Foreign  Editor  of 
the  Temps,  was  not  foreign  to  the  fall  of  M.  Pichon,  was  one  of  the 
most  efficient  coadjutors  of  the  policy  explicitly  formulated  in  the 
Agreement  of  1909 ;  but  that  to  attack  him,  as  he  has  been  attacked, 
for  loyally  undertaking  to  facilitate  the  application  of  that  Agreement, 
is  an  absurd  injustice.  He  does  not  appear  to  have  understood,  in 
1909,  nor  yet  in  1910 — any  more  than  Downing  Street  or  the  Quai 
d'Orsay  understood — that  Germany,  in  inducing  France  to  sign  the 
Agreement  of  1909,  had  laid  a  trap  for  the  Dual  Entente,  and  that  the 
logical  consequences  of  the  economic  co-operation,  reciprocally  accepted 


286  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

required  of  the  modern  diplomatist  are  no  longer  what 
they  were  even  at  the  time  of  the  Congress  of  Berlin. 
It  shows  that  economic  problems  are  coming  to  be  the 
dominant  themes  in  diplomatic  conversations,  and  that 
the  modern  successors  of  Richelieu  and  Bismarck  will 
probably  learn  more  by  studying  the  career  of  a  Colbert 
and  a  Pierpont  Morgan  than  from  perusal  of  Le  Testa- 
ment Politique,  or  even  of  the  Busch  Memoirs. 

VII 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  social  questions,  economic 
questions,  financial  questions,  are  henceforth  to  occupy 
the  attention  of  States  to  the  gradual  exclusion  of 
political  preoccupations.  It  is  not  merely  German 
diplomacy  which  is  becoming  more  and  more  what  the 
French  senator  M.  Pierre  Baudin  has  called  une  dip- 
lomatie  de  negoce,  and  what  Washington  designates  as 
"dollar  diplomacy."  It  is  not  only  in  Germany  that 
behind  the  Government,  hemming  it  in,  besieging  it, 
there  is  an  army  of  business  men,  of  metallurgists,  of 
mine  owners,  and  that  there  are  vast  populations  of 
working-men  or  farmers  whose  claims  determine,  to  a 
large  degree,  the  world-policy  of  this  or  that  Power. 
The  same  evolution  is  taking  place  throughout  the 
world,  and  a  people  which  fails  to  recognize  the  growing 

by  France  and  Germany,  would  be  to  thwart  that  very  ideal  of 
"  European  Equilibrium "  which  he  himself  has  done  more  than  any 
other  French  journalist  to  foster.  It  should  be  added  that  the  services 
rendered  to  European  peace  during  the  last  ten  years  by  the  untiring 
energy,  the  remarkable  lucidity  and  the  argumentative  resource,  with 
which  this  great  journalist  has  daily  forced  his  compatriots  to  face  the 
realities  of  the  European  situation,  are  of  incomparable  value.  During 
the  period  in  question,  not  even  any  French  statesman,  with  the  single 
exceptions  of  M.  Delcasse  and  M.  Poincare,  has  played  so  interesting, 
so  intelligent,  and  so  original,  a  part. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     287 

importance  of  financial,  commercial  and  industrial 
interests  in  international  relations  is  fated  to  be  left 
behind  in  the  international  race.  The  first  obligation 
of  the  modern  diplomatist  is  to  acquaint  himself  with 
the  economic  facts,  determining  the  political  aspirations 
and  the  social  organization  of  the  country  to  which  he 
is  accredited.  For  the  eloquent  idioms  and  generalizing 
formulas  of  the  old  diplomacy  is  substituted  to-day  the 
precise  language  of  the  counting-room.  A  diplomatic 
instrument  is  no  longer  read  in  its  spirit,  it  is  scrutinized 
to  the  letter.  Woe  to  the  partner  to  an  agreement  who 
has  forgotten  to  define,  with  legal  definiteness,  the  pos- 
sible points  which  the  shifting  course  of  events  may 
raise  in  the  interpretation  of  the  Treaty !  Thus  the 
numerous  germs  of  conflict  latent  in  the  Franco-German 
Treaty  of  1911  are  due  to  the  fact  that  French  Foreign 
Office  negotiators  have  not  yet  completely  assimilated 
the  business  methods  that  prevail  at  the  Wilhelmstrasse.1 
They  continue  to  follow  the  French  habit  of  securing  the 
recognition  by  their  opponents  of  the  general  principles 
that  are  regarded  as  essential,  and  in  neglecting  the 
material  and  concrete  application  of  those  principles. 
In  the  Treaty  just  mentioned,  it  would  be  possible  to 
point  out  half  a  dozen  instances  of  ambiguities  or  omis- 
sions calculated  to  endanger  the  peace  of  Europe.  But 
this  Treaty  has  been  cited  solely  as  a  typical  modern 
case.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the  science  of  inter- 
national relations,  the  Franco-German  negotiations  of 
1911  are  one  with  the  Trans-Iranian  projects  of  the 
Triple  Entente,  one  with  the  negotiations  respecting 
the  construction  of  the  Baghdad  Railway,  one  with  the 
Italian  expedition  to  Tripoli,  and  one  with  the  problem 
of  a  Servian  outlet  to  the  sea ;  behind  the  fa9ade  of 
1  See  p.  295,  note  1. 


288  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Government,  financial  considerations,  with  increasing 
frequency  and  force,  are  determining  the  policies  of 
States. 

Signer  Guglielmo  Ferrero  has  pointed  out  that  "if 
Turkey  has  lost  Tripoli,  it  is  because  the  bellicose  enthu- 
siasm of  a  new  nationalistic  Italy  has  forced  the  hand 
of  the  Government."  The  rapid  rise  and  the  effective 
activity  of  the  young  Italian  nationalists  is  one  of  the 
most  interesting  socio-political  phenomena  of  our  time. 
But,  behind  this  remarkable  movement,  a  curious  series 
of  invisible  financial  causes  prepared  Italian  public 
opinion  for  the  conquest  of  the  ancient  Roman  province 
of  Libya.  The  story,  as  told  by  an  excellent  authority, 
M.  Pinon,1  shows  how  readily  the  flexible  Italian  soul, 
delighting  in  combinazioni,  succeeds  in  reconciling  the 
most  reciprocally  contrary  sentiments  when  "interest" 
is  paramount. 

"  At  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of  Leo  XIII,  the  Banco  di  Roma 
was  a  financial  house  of  relatively  slight  importance,  established  by 
private  individuals.  Its  manager,  Ernesto  Pacelli,  succeeded  in  winning 
the  confidence  of  the  Pope's  entourage,  and  Leo  XIII  entrusted  to  him 
the  funds  of  the  Holy  See.  The  addition  of  this  new  capital  made  it 
possible  for  the  Banco  di  Roma  to  develop  its  business.  But  its  rela- 
tions with  the  Vatican  prevented  it  from  penetrating  into  the  business 
world  connected  with  the  Quirinal,  and  notably  to  get  its  bills  dis- 
counted by  the  Bank  of  Italy.  Eager  to  force  that  door,  the  Banco 
di  Roma  sought  advice  in  Government  circles.  The  President  of  its 
Board  of  Directors  was  the  President  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce, 
brother  of  the  then  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  Signor  Tittoni.  It  was 
the  period  when  the  Italian  Government  was  signing  with  M.  Delcasse 
the  Agreements  declaring  that  France  repudiated  her  interests  in  the 
Tripolitaine  and  that  Italy  repudiated  hers  in  Morocco  (1902).  The 
Italian  Government  wished  to  secure  in  the  Tripolitaine  economic 
interests,  which  would  permit  it  to  develop  Italian  industry  and 
commerce  there,  which  would  virtually  amount  to  securing  a  mortgage 

1  See  "  L'Europe  et  la  Guerre  Italo-Turque,"  by  Ren£  Pinon,  the 
Revue  des  deux  Mondce,  June  1,  1912. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     289 

on  the  province,  and  might,  were  the  case  ever  to  arise,  provide  an 
opportunity  for  armed  intervention.  The  Banco  di  Roma  secured  the 
coveted  business  connexion  with  the  Bank  of  Italy,  promising  in  return 
to  participate  in  Italian  enterprises  in  the  Tripolitaine  and  in  Cyrenaica. 
A  whole  series  of  undertakings  and  ventures  were  then  founded  in 
Tripoli  and  along  the  coast,  with  the  capital,  and  under  the  direction 
of  an  agent  of  the  Banco  di  Roma,  Signor  Bresciani,  an  ex-official  in 
Erythrea  :  oil  industries,  soap  manufactures,  grain  elevators,  fisheries, 
the  sponge  trade,  the  purchase  of  land,  electric  works  at  Benghazi,  a 
shipping  line  subventioned  by  the  Government,  and  possessing  at 
present  four  steamers.  Missions  were  sent  inland  to  enter  into  rela- 
tions with  the  influential  chiefs  and  marabouts.  The  Banco  di  Roma 
increased  its  capital  to  80,000,000  francs,  and  recently  augmented  it 
still  further.  Notwithstanding  these  efforts  trade  remained  stagnant ; 
business  did  not  develop ;  the  capital  expended  remained  unproductive ; 
the  financial  obligations  became  more  and  more  serious.  The  Ottoman 
officials  put  all  kinds  of  obstacles  in  the  way  of  the  economic  develop- 
ment of  the  province,  seeking  particularly  to  thwart  the  Italian  ven- 
tures; at  Benghazi,  for  instance,  the  electric  power  works,  for  the 
lighting  of  the  town,  were  not  authorized.  The  Banco  di  Roma, 
having  engaged  a  considerable  capital  in  Africa,  in  the  interest  and 
almost  at  the  suggestion  of  the  Government,  with  the  assurance  that 
one  day  the  Tripolitaine  and  Cyrenaica  would  pass  under  Italian 
domination,  and  that  the  expectations  of  the  shareholders  would 
eventually  be  recompensed,  found  itself,  it  is  said,  in  difficulties.  Last 
year,  its  manager  informed  the  Government  that  he  was  on  the  point 
of  being  driven  to  a  liquidation  of  his  interests  in  the  Tripolitaine,  and 
that  he  was  preparing  to  enter  upon  pourparlers  with  an  English  group 
and  a  German  group.  It  would  appear  that  this  prospect  greatly 
contributed  to  the  determination  of  the  Government  to  intervene,  if 
necessary,  by  arms.  Once  hostilities  begun,  the  Banco  di  Roma  obtained 
the  contract  for  the  commissariat  operations  and  the  clothing  of  the 
troops  of  the  expeditionary  corps.  It  remains  associated  with  the 
Government  for  the  development  of  Italian  interests  in  the  Tripolitaine. 
Thus,  the  Bank  which  has  the  confidence  of  the  Vatican  happens,  at 
the  same  time,  to  be  the  first  and  foremost  promoter  of  Italian  enter- 
prises in  the  Tripolitaine  :  an  elegant  combinazione,  uniting,  for  a 
work  of  Italian  expansion  and  Christian  propaganda,  the  two  historic 
forces  in  Rome  which  officially  ignore  each  other  and  mutually  combat 
one  another." 

An  elegant  combinazione,  indeed !  And  what  more 
conclusive  illustration  of  the  modern  craving  for  a 
happy  mixture  of  idealism  and  of  economic  well-being  ? 


290  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Perhaps  if  any  could  be  had  it  would  be  found  in  the 
case  of  Servia's  long  struggle  for  economic  emancipa- 
tion.    Up  to   1905   this  little  nation  of  farmers  and 
stock-breeders  (in  1912,  Servian  exports  amounted  to 
about  one  hundred  million  francs,  out  of  which  62  per 
cent,  was  represented  by  the  products  of  the  soil,  and 
20  per  cent,  by  cattle  and  pork),  remained  in  economic 
subjection  to  Austria.     Austria's  dream  was  to  annex 
Servia  to  her  great  composite  Empire.    Whenever  Servia 
displayed  signs  of  political  independence,  Austria,  who 
all  but  monopolized  Servian  exports,  began  the  economic 
blackmailing  of    her  imprisoned    neighbour  by  closing 
her    markets    to   Servian   pork    and    beef.     A    Servian 
statesman,   M.   Paschitch,   resolved   to  put  an  end   to 
these  humiliations.     In   1906   he  proposed  a  customs 
union  between  the  three  Slav  states  of  the  Balkans ;  he 
thus  took  the  first  step  for  the  formation  of  that  Balkan 
Confederation  which  six  years  later  was  to  astonish  the 
world.     Servian  live-stock  was  partially  diverted  from 
the  old  Austrian  routes,  and  transported  by  the  Danube, 
the  Ludwigs-Canal  and  the  Main  to  German  markets.    A 
second  outlet  for  Servian  products  was  procured  at  Varna 
by  means  of  concessions  accorded  on  the  Bulgarian  rail- 
ways.    A  favourable  treaty  of  commerce  was  arranged 
with   France.     Little   by   little    the   old   trade-current 
through    Bosnia    and    to    the    Dalmatian    coast   was 
diminished  and  Servia  was  now  selling  her  pork  and 
cereals,  without  the  Austrian  middleman,  through  the 
channel  of  the  Black  Sea  ports  and  Salonica,  in  all  the 
Mediterranean  ports,  from  Syria  by  way  of  Egypt  to 
Italy.     The  need  of  direct  communication  between  the 
Danube  and  the  Adriatic  became  steadily  more  obvious, 
and  Servian  claims  to  economic  autonomy,  the  only 
form  of  independence  which  in  the  modern  world  is  the 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     291 

sign  of  political  autonomy,  became  more  and  more 
legitimate.  Austrian  imports  fell  from  60  per  cent,  to 
35  per  cent.  Then  came  the  war  of  1912.  Within  only 
a  few  days  after  the  opening  of  hostilities,  Austria  beheld 
the  Servian  troops  in  possession  of  Uskub,  of  old  Servia, 
of  a  large  portion  of  the  Sandjak  of  Novi-Bazar,  and 
rapidly  making  for  the  Adriatic  coast-line.  A  national 
policy  of  more  than  thirty  years  was  thereby  suddenly 
stultified.  Servia  had  burst  her  bounds,  and  was  no 
longer  the  ward  of  the  Dual  Monarchy.  In  an  adroit 
appeal  addressed  to  English  sympathy,  through  The 
Times  (November  24,  1912),  the  Servian  Prime  Minister, 
M.  Paschitch,  explained  that  independence  of  trade  and 
economic  liberty  were  not  only  necessary  for  Servia's 
development,  and  even  for  her  existence,  but  also 
advantageous  to  the  world ;  an  Adriatic  outlet,  he 
argued,  would  give  Servia  new  neighbours,  "  since  every 
maritime  nation  would  then  be  Servia's  neighbour  as 
much  as  Austria  is  to-day."  Servia  was  particularly 
happy  at  the  thought  that  she  was  thus  to  secure  direct 
contact  with  England,  and  to  live  henceforth  in  close 
relations  with  the  nations  of  the  West. 

It  is  obvious  at  last  that  the  general  desire  for  reform, 
and  the  outburst  of  nationalism,  on  the  one  hand,  and, 
on  the  other,  the  positive  recognition  of  the  fact  that 
money  is  to-day  the  chief  instrument  of  rapid  and 
successful  action,  are  merely  different  aspects  of  the 
same  state  of  mind. 


BOOK   IV 


precarious  settlement  of  the  seven  years' 
_  Moroccan  quarrel  between  France  and  Germany 
was  a  humiliation  for  the  latter  Power,  and  not  merely 
because  she  failed  to  secure  a  naval  basis  on  the  Atlantic 
coast  of  Morocco  and  a  free  hand  to  delve  in  the 
mineral  riches  of  that  region.  The  episode,  above  all, 
revealed  to  the  world  Germany's  inability  to  sunder 
England,  France  and  Russia,  and  also  the  unstable 
equilibrium  of  her  own  financial  and  economic  resources. 
The  existing  lame  solution  of  the  Moroccan  difficulty 
provisionally l  settled  only  one  of  the  differences  between 
France  and  Germany.  The  Great  Misunderstanding 
remained  more  acute  than  ever.  In  a  brilliant  book, 
characterized  by  a  specious  candour,  Prince  von  Biilow 
has  sought  in  vain  to  convince  his  countrymen  that  the 
German  combinazione  concerning  Morocco,  for  the 

1  Already,  in  a  spirit  of  chicane,  the  German  Government  hag 
announced  its  intention  of  taking  to  the  Hague  the  question  of  her 
claim  (contrary  to  the  clear  interpretation  of  the  Franco-German 
Treaty  of  1911)  to  submit  to  public  adjudication,  not  merely  Moroccan 
State  enterprise,  but  also  public  works  undertaken  for  the  municipali- 
ties. Cf.  p.  287.  In  his  "  Imperial  Germany  "  (English  edition,  p.  84) 
Prince  von  Biilow  says :  "  The  decision  of  the  Algeciras  Conference 
.  .  .  provided  a  bell  we  could  ring  at  any  time  should  France  show 
any  similar  tendencies  again."  The  incident  just  mentioned  means 
that  Germany  is  "ringing  the  bell." 

295 


296  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

responsibility  of  which  he  claims  the  honour,  was 
merely  a  logical  part  of  the  inevitable  development  of 
the  Bismarckian  policy.  (See  p.  320.)  The  German 
people  at  last  clearly  perceive  the  inconvenient  conse- 
quences of  the  ill-advised  foreign  policy  of  their  rulers  : 
a  resuscitated  France,  throbbing  with  optimism  and 
potentially  belligerent  ;*  a  British  Empire,  which — after 
a  period  in  which  the  Colonies  seemed  to  be  breaking 
away  from  England,  like  so  much  Imperial  star-dust 
bent  on  parabolic  careers  of  their  own — is  now  re- 
forming, in  centripetal  spiral  movements,  under  the 
astonished  eyes  of  the  world  ;2  an  Entente  Cordiale 
between  the  new  British  Imperial  System  and  the  Dual 
Alliance ;  a  Dual  Alliance  between  France  and  Russia, 
closer  knit  than  ever  by  definite  engagements  that  are 
bound  to  upset  the  whole  balance  of  power  in  the 
Baltic,  the  North  Sea,  and  eventually  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean; a  Russia,  rapidly  arming,  and  consolidating 
its  military  situation  in  Europe,  in  anticipation  of  the 

1  "  H  n'a  pas  dependu  de  nous  de  conserver  la  paix  aux  autres. 
Pour  nous  la  conserver  toujours  a  nous-meines,  il  faut  garder  en  nous 
toute  la  patience,  toute  I'e'nergie,  toute  la  fierte",  d'un  peuple  qui  ne 
veut  pas  la,  guerre  ei  qui  pourtant  ne  la  craint  pas." — Speech  of  the 
French  Prime  Minister,  M.  Poincar£,  at  Nantes,  October  27,  1912. 
Cf.  also  Notes,  pp.  165  and  198. 

2  Even  the  native  rulers  of  the  Dependencies  are  feeling  the  thrill 
of   Imperialism.     In  November,   1912,  the   Federated   Malay  States 
presented  to  the  British  Government  a  first-class  armoured  ship.     On 
December  5,  1912,  Canada  offered  three  Dreadnoughts  to  the  British 
Navy,  and  at  one  o'clock  in  the  morning  of  February  14,  1913,  amid 
scenes  of  great  enthusiasm,  the  Borden  Naval  Bill,  providing  for  the 
application  of  a  sum  of  $35,000,000,  "for  the  purpose  of  immediately 
increasing  the  effective  naval  forces  of  the  Empire,"  was  passed  by 
115  votes  to  83.     South  Africa  will  shortly  come  into  line  with  Canada, 
New  Zealand  and  Australia,  and  contribute  its  quota  of  ships  to  the 
strength  of  the  British  Navy.     The  Defence  Conference,  which  it  was 
planned  to  convene  at  Vancouver  for  1913  in  order  to  register  results 
undreamed  of  before  Agadir,  has  not  yet  been  held. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     297 

bursting  of  the  dykes  of  Germanism  either  in  the  region 
of  the  Danube  or  in  the  Middle  East,  a  Russia,  moreover, 
— and  this  is  even  more  important — relentlessly  pre- 
paring, by  abrogation  of  the  tariff  regime  concluded 
between  her  and  Germany  in  1904,  to  secure,  in  1917, 
an  economic  liberty  which  will  upset  the  commercial 
balance  of  power  throughout  the  world ;  and,  finally,  a 
Far  East,  which,  owing  to  the  Russo-Japanese  pre- 
cautions for  the  monopoly  of  vast  tracts  of  China,  is 
becoming  more  rapidly  closed  to  German  political 
expansion  than  ever  Africa  was  closed  to  such  expansion 
by  the  shortsightedness  of  Bismarck. 

These  events  and  tendencies — of  which  the  list  might 
have  been  much  enlarged — are  the  evident  logical  con- 
sequence of  Germany's  anti -German  foreign  policy 
during  the  last  seven  years,  and  some  are  the  direct 
result  of  the  latest  of  her  blunders,  the  despatch  of  the 
Panther  to  Agadir. 

It  was  inconceivable  that  she  should  not  have  learned 
the  lesson  temporarily;  yet  the  German  Emperor, 
sceptical  as  to  the  perspicacity  of  his  people,  recently 
reminded  them  that  pan-Germanism  is  not  a  panacea 
for  the  revival  of  German  prestige.  The  confession  was 
a  courageous  act  of  political  wisdom.  But  calculated, 
as  it  would  have  seemed,  to  point  the  full  moral  of 
a  sequence  of  German  blunders,  William  II  evidently 
regarded  it  as  utterly  inadequate.  Early  in  July  1912, 
a  few  days  only  after  the  Russian  Duma  had  voted 
grants  for  the  construction  of  four  "  Dreadnoughts"  of 
30,000  tons,  four  ironclad  cruisers,  eighteen  torpedo 
boats,  and  twelve  submarines,  as  "  the  necessary  guar- 
antee of  the  national  dignity  and  security"  (words 
of  Mr.  Kokovtzof,  June  19)  which  had  been  endangered 
at  Tsushima,  the  German  Emperor  met  the  Tsar  at 


298  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Port-Baltic,  and  when  the  two  sovereigns  parted  the 
following  authorized  statement  was  given  out : — 

The  political  conversations,  which  extended  to  all  questions  of  the 
day,  strengthened  on  both  sides  the  conviction  that  it  still  remains  of 
the  highest  importance  for  the  interests  of  the  two  neighbour  Empires 
and  of  the  general  peace  to  maintain  the  mutual  contact,  based  upon 
reciprocal  confidence.  There  could  be  no  question  either  of  new 
agreements,  because  there  was  no  particular  occasion  for  them,  or  of 
producing  alterations  of  any  kind  in  the  grouping  of  the  European 
Powers,  the  value  of  which  for  the  maintenance  of  equilibrium  and 
of  peace  has  already  been  proved. 

Nicholas  II  thus  became  answerable  before  the  world 
for  the  sincerity  of  William  II's  pacific  intentions,  but 
for  this  service  he  demanded  a  compensation.  He 
forced  William  II  to  declare  to  the  world,  and  to  his 
own  people,  that  the  policy  of  the  Triple  Entente,  which 
Germany  had  untiringly  attacked,  was  a  policy  that  had 
restored  the  balance  of  power  in  Europe,  and  that  made 
for  peace.  And,  having  secured  William  II's  acqui- 
escence in  this  verity,  Nicholas  II  and  M.  Poincare 
seized  the  first  solemn  opportunity  offered  them — that 
of  their  second  meeting  at  Peterhof  on  July  21,  1914 — 
to  emphasize  the  same  word :  equilibrium,  which  figured 
so  conspicuously  in  the  statement  published  at  Port- 
Baltic.1 

Germany's  attitude  at  Port-Baltic  was  either  the 
mea  culpa  of  a  prodigiously  disinterested  European 

1  The  Tsar  said  in  his  toast :  "  Unies  de  longue  date  par  la  sympathie 
mutuelle  des  peuples,  et  par  les  interets  communs,  la  France  et  la 
Bussie  sont  depuis  bientot  un  quart  de  siecle  e*troitement  liees  pour 
rnieux  poursuivre  le  merue  but,  qui  consiste  a  sauvegarder  leurs 
inte"rets,  en  collaborant  a  Fequilibre  et  d  la  paix  en  Europe."  The 
reply  of  the  President  of  the  Republic  was  :  "  Pres  de  vingt-cinq  ans 
ont  passe  depuis  que,  dans  une  claire  vision  de  leur  destin,  nos  pays 
ont  uni  les  efforts  de  leur  diplomatic,  et  les  heureux  n'sultat  de  cette 
association  permanente  se  font  tous  les  jours  sentir  dans  Vequililre 
du  monde." 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     299 

patriotism  or  an  ingenious  device  for  gaining  time,  in 
order  to  begin  again,  at  a  more  favourable  moment,  the 
old  German  policy  of  intimidation.  In  either  case  it 
was  the  direct  result  of  forces  actively  at  work  during 
the  previous  years,  of  which  Agadir  may  be  taken  as 
the  supreme  symbol.  Port-Baltic  was  the  reverse  of  the 
medal  of  Agadir.  Germany's  decision  to  be  prudent, 
or,  at  all  events,  to  play  a  mystifyingly  prudent  game 
and  to  adopt  a  franker  idiom — to  speak  English  and 
French  instead  of  German 1 — had  been  foreshadowed  by 
the  despatch  to  London  of  one  of  her  ablest  statesmen, 
Baron  Marschall  von  Bieberstein.  The  business  methods 
of  that  distinguished  negotiator  had  immensely  ad- 
vanced his  country's  interest  at  Constantinople.  The 
issue  of  the  Franco-German  colloquy  of  1911,  and  the 
events  which  Agadir  precipitated  in  Europe,  appreciably 
limited  the  potential  range  of  his  activity.  What  took 
place  in  Europe  during  1912,  and  notably  the  declarations 
of  his  intelligent  master  at  Hamburg  and  Port-Baltic, 
rendered  the  role  of  this  German  ambassador  in  London 
one  which  was  bound  to  be  rather  that  of  a  consular 
than  of  a  diplomatic  agent.  While  he  was  biding  his 
time  and  laying  his  plans,  Baron  Marschall  suddenly 

1  "  Odo  gave  some  curious  details  of  the  interview  between  Bismarck 
and  Thiers.  The  eventful  one  which  terminated  in  the  signature  of 
the  treaty  lasted  nearly  eight  hours.  The  old  Frenchman's  volubility 
began  to  wear  the  Chancellor's  patience,  and,  after  many  hours,  he 
said  :  '  You  talk  a  language  I  cannot  follow,  and  reply  to,  as  you  do. 
I  will  answer  you  in  my  own' — well  knowing  that  Thiers  did  not 
understand  German.  Thereupon  ensued  a  Babylonia  of  jabber, 
Bismarck  using  very  strong  language  in  his  vernacular,  which,  in 
reply  to  Thiers'  frantic  inquiries  :  '  Qu'est  ce  qu'il  dit  .?>  was  not 
translated  literally  by  the  bystanders." — Anecdote  from  the  private 
and  unpublished  papers  of  Hamilton  Aide,  in  the  possession  of  the 
author  :  "  Notes  of  Evenings  at  Lady  W.  Russell's.  Sunday,  April  18, 
1871." 


300  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

died  (September  24,  1912).  Less  than  a  month  later, 
simultaneously  with  the  conclusion  of  peace  between 
Turkey  and  Italy,  and  with  the  outbreak  of  war  between 
Turkey  and  the  Balkan  States,  Prince  Charles  Max 
Lichnowsky  was  appointed  his  successor.  In  the 
Deutsche  Revue,  three  months  before,  when  the  Balkan 
Day  of  Judgment  still  seemed  remote,  Prince  Lich- 
nowsky had  frankly  declared  his  conviction  that  "  no 
diplomatic  artifice  could  possibly  destroy  the  friendship 
between  France  and  England."  He  added :  "  We 
Germans  must  accept  the  new  conditions  of  existence 
created  in  Europe  by  the  alliances  and  ententes,  alli- 
ances and  ententes  in  which  we  have  not  participated, 
and  which  have  constantly  been  formed,  if  not  against 
us,  at  all  events  independently  of  us."  The  confession 
of  Port-Baltic  would  seem  to  have  been  the  echo  of 
the  prudent  and  reasonable  declarations  of  the  future 
German  ambassador  in  London.  But,  in  spite  of  these 
declarations — and  even  if  the  two  wars  in  the  Balkans, 
with  all  their  consequences,  had  not  exposed  the 
stability  of  the  Triple  Entente  to  grave  and  unexpected 
risks — the  members  of  that  group  should  keep  well  in 
mind  that  the  anomalous  and  unstable  character  of  the 
German  Imperial  Constitution — the  particularism  of  the 
States  composing  an  Empire  provisionally  welded  into 
a  kind  of  puzzle-nation  solely  by  economic  interest  and 
by  the  ingenious  creation  of  a  Reichsland  regarded  as  a 
sort  of  national  Pan-German  park — constitutes  a  danger 
for  Europe  and  for  peace.  A  Confederation  like  the 
German  Empire  can  hold  together  only  as  long  as  it  is 
in  the  interest  of  the  majority  of  its  members  to  co- 
operate harmoniously.  When  such  co-operation  ceases 
to  "  pay "  economically,  or  is  not  needed  in  order  to 
repulse  foreign  aggression,  dissolution  inevitably  sets  in. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     301 

It  f ollows  that  a  prolonged  economic  crisis  or  a  lasting 
condition  of  European  peace  would  tend  to  disintegrate 
the  German  Empire ;  whereas  steady  economic  well- 
being  and  a  chronic  state  of  military  panic  belong  to 
the  class  of  causes  that  favour  the  maintenance  of 
German  unity  and  the  development  of  a  German 
national  spirit.  Thus  Imperial  Germany  longs  with 
the  same  passion  for  both  peace  and  war.  In  the  case 
of  such  a  Power  a  consistent  foreign  policy  is  impossible. 
The  Bismarckian  impetus  still  governs  the  trend  of 
German  action.  But  just  as  a  spent  bullet  ricochets 
from  the  protuberances  of  the  soil  as  it  skims  the 
ground,  so  the  dying  Bismarckian  diplomacy  moves  no 
longer  in  that  steady  curve,  describing  the  inevitable 
resultant  of  forces,  which  that  realist  of  genius,  alive  to 
the  essential  conditions  of  the  problem  he  set  himself  to 
solve,  had  the  insight  and  the  will  to  give  to  the  foreign 
policy  of  his  country.  That  policy  is  now  bumping  and 
jostling  towards  its  ends.  The  tactics  of  Germany's 
rulers,  responsible  for  the  defence  of  the  essential 
Imperial  interests  that  the  Bismarckian  policy  be- 
queathed to  them,  are  bound  to  gyrate  between  patient, 
methodical,  and  apparently  peaceful  activity  and  hys- 
terical and  brutal  intimidation  and  bluff ;  and  both 
attitudes  are,  from  the  German  point  of  view,  equally 
advisable  and  equally  sincere.1  The  corresponding 

1  See  Chapter  II,  "  The  Weakness  of  the  Government,"  and 
Chapter  IV,  "The  Parliamentary  Disorder,"  in  the  remarkable 
analysis  of  contemporary  unrest  in  Germany  in  M.  William  Martin's 
book  quoted  on  pp.  157  and  244.  In  March  1914  a  violent  press 
campaign  was  suddenly  begun  against  Russia  in  the  German  press. 
Inspired  organs  extolled  the  project  dear  to  the  Pan-Germanists  of  a 
11  preventive  war "  against  Russia.  The  only  consequence  of  this 
characteristic  outburst  of  the  German  temperament  was  to  confirm 
Russian  opinion  in  the  suspicion  that  postponement  of  military  pre- 
cautions against  Germany  must  not  be  allowed  to  continue.  Once 


302  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

attitude  incumbent  on  Germany's  neighbours  is  evident. 
When  Germany  is  calm  they  should  prepare  for  war ; 
when  Germany  blusters  they  should  be  calm.  They 
should  neither  be  the  dupe  of  her  friendly  overtures 
nor  the  panic-struck  victim  of  her  facile  bluff.  And  if 
ever  the  time  comes  when  she  oversteps  the  mark,  her 
own  Teutonic  mark  or  any  other  ;  if  ever  the  necessity 
of  preserving  German  national  unity  suggests  to  her 
princes  the  wisdom  of  preaching  to  the  German  people 
a  new  crusade  for  the  salvation  of  the  German  soul,  the 
French  and  the  English  and  the  Russians  need  only 
heed  the  words  of  the  Damoysel  de  la  Mer  in  Amadis  de 
Gaule :  "S'ils  voyent  seulement  vos  visages  asseurez,  je 
suis  sur  qu'ils  ne  les  pourront  souffrir  :  donnons  dedans  : 
car  Dieu  nous  ayde." 

II 

The  utility  of  the  present  grouping  of  the  Powers  is 
now  generally  acknowledged.  No  fears  engendered  by 
the  Balkan  Scare  should  obliterate  from  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  Powers  of  the  Triple  Entente  the  knowledge, 
so  laboriously  acquired,  of  the  real  conditions  of  inter- 
national peace.  Germany  remains  Germany  in  spite  of 
the  Balkan  League.  The  fact  of  war  in  the  Balkans 
has  made  it  all  the  more  necessary  for  the  Powers  of 
the  Triple  Entente  to  entrench  themselves  in  their 
positions  and  to  prepare  for  contingencies.  It  was, 
indeed,  characteristic  of  German  methods  that  at  the 
very  outset  of  the  first  Balkan  war,  when  it  was 
natural  to  anticipate  the  probable  assembling  of  a 
European  conference,  for  the  purpose  of  vamping  up 

again  (cf.  p.  174)  German  bluff  was  to  weld  into  a  compacter  associa- 
tion the  three  members  of  the  Triple  Entente. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     303 

the  worn-out  clauses  of  the  Treaty  of  Berlin,  Germany 
revived  its  old  policy  of  blandishment  of  France.  An 
inspired  German  press  defended  the  thesis  that  in  the 
Balkan  Crisis  the  position  of  France  and  Germany  was 
almost  identical.  The  suggestion  was  that,  since  both 
desired  European  peace,  they  enjoyed  the  singular 
privilege  of  being  able  to  co-operate  for  maintaining  it. 
But  such  co-operation  would  have  implied  another 
experiment  in  rapprochement  of  the  kind  which  proved 
so  disastrous  in  1909  and  ended  at  Agadir. 

Henceforth  partners  to  the  Triple  Entente  must  work 
together  throughout  the  world,  and  not  merely  at  this 
or  that  danger-spot,  such  as  the  North  Sea,  the  Medi- 
terranean,   and    the    Middle-East,   or   the   Caribbean. 
Common  action,  however,  is  impossible   if   the   three 
Powers  are  distracted  by  their  several  domestic  prob- 
lems.    A    necessary   preliminary   of   effective   common 
action  on  the  part  of  the  pacific  Triple  Entente  is  that 
its  members  shall  severally  put  their  houses  in  order. 
When  they  shall  have  completed  that  urgent  task,  and 
when,    furthermore,   they   shall    have   secured   all   the 
necessary  subterranean — or  other  ! — channels  of  com- 
munication between  each   other's  domains,  then,  but 
only  then,  will  they  have  the  leisure  to  work  out  a 
common  and  elastic  line  of  action,  embracing  all  possible 
contingencies  and  aiming   at    and   assuring  the  main- 
tenance of  peace  in  the  world.     Then,  but  only  then, 
moreover,  can  they  safely  do  business  (negotiations : 
neg-otium),  collectively  or  individually,  with  Germany. 

The  "  European  Concert,"  in  the  old  sense  of  the 
word,  is  possible  only  at  the  price  of  war.  The  only 
form  of  "  Concert ''  now  possible  is  one  organized  for 
provisional  ends  between  the  two  distinct  groups  of 
Powers  ;  each  group  of  three  acting  as  a  single  integral 


304  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Power,  after  independently  concerted  arrangements 
between  the  several  members  of  each  group.  This  was 
the  character  of  diplomatic  action  during  the  two  Balkan 
wars.  Throughout  both  of  those  episodes  the  Triple 
Entente  sought  "to  bring  about  a  general  understand- 
ing of  all  the  Powers,"  and  distinctly  avoided  "  seeking 
to  settle  the  difficulties  of  the  moment  by  dwelling  on 
any  systematic  opposition  of  the  international  groups." 
But  the  diplomatic  action  of  the  Powers  of  the  Triple 
Entente  was  common  action,  the  nature  of  which  was 
determined  by  protracted  preliminary  negotiations 
between  them,  negotiations  in  which  the  members  of 
the  Triple  Alliance  had  played  no  part.  The  method 
thus  practised — and  the  efficacy  of  which  was  proved 
notably  after  Enver  Bey's  and  Shevket  Pasha's  coup 
d'etat  of  January  24,  1913 — bore  no  analogy  with  the 
classic  method  employed  in  the  period  prior  to  Bismarck's 

1  Speech  of  the  French  Prime  Minister,  M.  Poincare,  in  the  Chamber 
of  Deputies,  December  21,  1912.  The  results  of  this  system  made  it 
possible  for  the  Tsar,  in  June  1913,  just  before  the  outbreak  of  the 
second  Balkan  War,  to  congratulate  his  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs  in 
the  following  terms :  "  L'accueil  cordial  que  j'ai  re$u  de  la  part  de 
1'empereur  d'AUemagne  et  de  la  population  berlinoise  et  mon  entrevue 
amicale  avec  le  roi  d'Angleterre  [in  Berlin,  on  the  occasion  of  the 
marriage  of  the  daughter  of  William  II],  m'ont  re^oui  d'autant  plus 
que  j'ai  pu  y  voir,  independamment  des  traditions  de  vieille  aruitie,  une 
manifestation  de  solidarite  sur  les  principales  questions  de  politique 
europeenne  dans  le  moment  present  et  comme  un  gage  solide  assurant 
les  bienfaits  de  la  paix  si  necessaire  au  bonheur  de  toutes  les  nations. 
Reconnaissant  que  dans  le  labour  p^nible  qui  vous  a  incombe^  en 
raison  des  eV£nements  balkaniques,  vous  avez  non  eeulement  ex£cut6 
coinpletement  toutes  les  indications  que  je  vous  ai  donnees,  inspire 
des  interets  de  la  Russie  bien  aimee,  mais  que  vous  avez  su,  par  la 
penetration  de  votre  esprit,  votre  fermet^  dans  la  defense  de  vos 
opinions  et  le  traitement  consciencieux  de  chaque  question,  vous 
assurer  Pestime  et  la  confiance  de  ceux  qui  participent  &  la  solution 
Internationale  des  problemes  compliqu^s  et  difficiles  en  jeu,  je  con- 
sidere  de  mon  devoir  de  vous  exprimer  ma  sincere  gratitude  et  de 
vous  dire  que  je  vous  demeure  constamment  favorable." 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     305 

death,  the  method  recalled  with  regret  by  the  Wilhelm- 
strasse,  and  still  apparently  extolled  by  certain  irre- 
sponsible French  statesmen,  among  whom  the  most 
eminent  is  the  ex-Foreign  Minister,  M.  Hanotaux.  To 
revert  to  this  old  method  to-day  would  not  be  to  re- 
construct Europe  ;  it  would  be  to  shatter  Europe. 
Destruction  of  either  one  of  the  present  groups  would 
instantly  be  followed  by  a  general  war.  This  is  why 
the  "European  Concert,"  in  the  old  sense  of  the  word, 
is  possible  only  at  the  price  of  war. 

The  Triple  Entente,  if  it  has  learned  anything  from 
the  events  of  the  last  ten  years,  will  certainly  have 
learned  to  say:  "United  we  stand,  divided  we  fall." 
It  must  henceforth  act  in  one  spirit  and  as  one  agent. 
When,  having  solved  their  own  several  domestic  problems, 
its  partners  proceed  to  draw  up  a  plan  of  common  action, 
they  can  give  Germany  every  assurance  that  Power  may 
require  of  their  willingness  to  see  her  obtain  any  reason- 
able place  in  the  sun  on  which  she  may  have  set  her 
heart.  International  business  may  be  allowed  to  pro- 
ceed unhampered  by  any  other  restrictions  than  those 
established  by  each  self-respecting  nation  in  the  defence 
of  its  own  national  integrity.  Russia  and  Germany 
and  England  may  work  out,  in  Europe  as  well  as  in 
the  Middle  East,  and  with  no  risk  to  the  Entente,  all 
the  legitimate  consequences  of  the  arrangements  of 
Potsdam.  France  and  Germany  may,  to  their  common 
advantage,  conclude  the  consortium  of  Ouenza,  an  ar- 
rangement of  immense  advantage  to  the  great  French 
colony  of  Algeria,  and  to  the  more  than  ever  indispen- 
sable naval  station  of  Bizerta.1  And  England  may  say 

1  The  appointment  of  M.  Jonnart,  ex-Governor-General  of  Algeria, 
to  the  post  of  Foreign  Minister  in  the  Briand  Cabinet  of  January  1913 
was  taken  as  an  earnest  of  the  rapid  realization  of  the  long-deferred 
Franco-German  arrangement  for  the  exploitation  of  the  Ouenza  mines, 


306  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

to  the  successor  of  Baron  Marschall  von  Bieberstein : 
"  Since  you  and  your  government  at  last  know  where  we 
stand,  there  is  no  longer  any  reason  why  we  should  not 
come  to  terms  over  certain  little  matters  that  still  await 
solution."1 

and  of  the  construction  of  a  railway  system  which  will  further  the 
development  of  an  extensive  region  of  North  Africa.  Unfortunately, 
however,  the  Briand  Government  fell  before  M.  Jonnart  was  able  to 
realize  his  dream.  It  was  not  until  February  6, 1914,  that  the  French 
Chamber  finally  ratified  the  Convention  enabling  France  to  exchange 
her  iron  for  German  coal,  and  to  establish,  for  the  first  time,  on  a  large 
scale,  a  principle  and  method  of  Franco-German  reciprocity  in  in- 
dustrial internationalism,  which,  if  persisted  in,  will  undoubtedly  have 
important  political  consequences.  Cf.  pp.  257-8. 

1  While  the  second  English  edition  of  this  book  was  being  exhausted, 
during  1913-1914,  the  programme  of  "  international  business "  here 
indicated  was  being  carried  out  on  a  grand  scale.  Parallel  negotiations 
were  conducted  between  England  and  Turkey,  France  and  Turkey, 
Germany  and  Turkey,  Eussia  and  Turkey,  France  and  Germany, 
England  and  Germany,  and  France  and  England,  resulting  in  a  series 
of  Agreements,  the  characteristic  common  note  of  which  was  that 
Germany,  at  last,  obtained  the  acquiescence  of  the  Powers  in  her 
claims  to  be  the  sole  concessionnaire  of  the  Baghdad  Railway.  In  com- 
pensation England  secured  the  confirmation  of  her  secular  pretensions 
to  a  protectorate  in  the  region  of  the  Persian  Gulf,  and,  keeping 
Koweit  in  her  sphere  of  influence,  forced  Germany  and  Turkey  to  fix 
the  terminus  of  the  Baghdad  Line  well  inland  at  Bassorah.  At  the 
same  time  France  secured  in  Syria  concessions  for  the  construction  of 
900  kilometres  of  railway,  and  in  Armenia  similar  concessions  amount- 
ing to  2,000  kilometres.  She  likewise  obtained  the  ports  of  Heraclea 
and  Inebali  in  the  Black  Sea,  and  of  Jaffa,  Caiffa  and  Tripoli  (Syria) 
in  the  Mediterranean.  These  remarkable  results — liquidating  without 
serious  international  friction  some  of  the  thorniest  problems  that  have 
divided  the  Powers,  and  constituting  the  beginning  of  a  new  era  in  the 
Middle  East — were  all  achieved  without  in  any  way  affecting  the 
balance  of  power  in  Europe,  and  without  disturbing  the  internal 
mechanism  of  the  two  great  groups  of  nations  :  the  Triple  Alliance 
and  the  Triple  Entente.  In  this  connexion  it  is  logical  to  record  that 
Russia,  too,  spent  some  months  in  1913  in  negotiating  with  Turkey 
relative  to  Armenia.  The  tragic  problem  of  "  Armenian  Reforms " 
was  thus  provisionally  solved  by  a  Russo-Turkish  Agreement  of 
February  8, 1914,  providing  for  the  appointment  of  European  inspectors 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     307 

Fresh  from  inspection  of  the  Krupp  works  at  Essen, 
Sir  Robert  Hadfield,  F.R.S.,  former  President  of  the 
Iron  and  Steel  Institute,  was  recently  interviewed  by 
the  Berlin  correspondent  of  the  Daily  Mail,  to  whom 
he  revealed x  the  fact  that  Germany,  the  Doubting 
Thomas  of  the  nations,  had  now  reached  a  frame  of 
mind  in  which  mere  protestations  of  good  will  towards 

possessing  control  of  the  administration,  the  police,  and  the  adruini&tra- 
tion  of  justice  in  Armenia,  and  for  certain  desirable  measures  of  local 
government  which  will  safeguard  the  lives,  property,  and  language  of 
this  long-suffering  population.  When  the  nations  "  take  account  of 
stock  "  as  to  their  business  dealings  with  Turkey  it  will  probably  be 
recognized  that  England  is  the  Power  that  has  reaped  the  most 
benefit  from  these  negotiations.  Her  arrangement  with  Turkey,  and, 
indeed,  the  Baghdad  arrangement  in  general  (in  virtue  of  which  the 
Powers  abandon  their  pretensions  to  the  internationalization  of  that 
line)  is  but  a  corollary  of  the  Potsdam  Agreement  of  1911,  which  some 
interpreted  at  the  time  as  a  blow  to  the  Triple  Entente  (cf.  p.  172  et  seq.) 
Russia  took  the  lead  in  a  policy  which  her  partners  have  imitated 
without  weakening  the  ties  that  bind  them  in  an  Entente  of  common 
defence  against  the  Triple  Alliance.  The  logical  and  practical  conse- 
quence of  Russia's  initiative  is  to  create  intangible  spheres  of  influence 
in  the  Middle  East,  hemming  in  on  either  hand  the  great  trunk 
railway  line  now  left  to  the  sole  exploitation  of  Germany.  England 
has  virtually  annexed  another  sea,  one  of  the  world's  highways.  She 
recognizes  the  suzerainty  of  the  Porte  over  Koweit,  but  the  Porte 
engages  not  to  interfere  in  Koweit's  internal  affairs,  and  recognizes  the 
validity  of  the  Convention  concluded  between  the  Sheikh  and  the 
British  Government.  The  Porte  likewise  abandons  its  pretensions  to 
suzerainty  over  the  Peninsula  of  El  Katr,  the  Bahrein  Islands,  and 
Muscat,  and,  finally,  the  Porte  recognizes  England's  right  to  light, 
buoy,  and  police  the  Gulf.  The  Young  Turks  have  thus  sold  their 
birthright  to  the  Powers  in  return  for  the  latter's  acquiescence  in  the 
proposed  scheme  for  an  increase  of  the  Turkish  Custom  dues.  As  far 
as  England  is  concerned,  once  the  Persian  Gulf  question  was  liquidated, 
the  Baghdad  dispute  evaporated.  Germany  awoke  to  find  that  her 
hopes  of  political  expansion  in  the  Middle  East  had  once  more  been 
thwarted  :  it  looked  like  another  case  of  "encirclement  "  Whereupon 
she  again  cried :  "  Compensations  !"  Were,  then,  the  new  Alexandretta 
concessions  nothing  ? 
1  "  What  Germany  wants,"  Daily  Mail,  February  20,  1912. 


308  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

her  were  waste  of  breath  ;  that  what  she  now  wanted 
from  England  was  a  sign,  a  "  tangible  act  like  the 
cession  of  Walfisch  Bay."  Sir  Robert  Hadfield,  con- 
vinced that  the  destiny  and  future  progress  of  the  world 
are  largely  in  the  hands  of  England,  Germany  and  the 
United  States,  proposed  a  triple  entente  of  those  three 
Powers  in  China,  with  the  object  of  exploiting  "the 
greatest  stores  of  coal  and  iron  in  the  world."  He  urged 
the  appointment  of  an  Anglo-German  board  of  twenty 
members,  all  business  men,  "  ten  great  Englishmen  and 
ten  great  Germans,  clothed  with  plenipotentiary  powers 
by  their  respective  governments,  to  discuss  and  seal 
what  might  be  called  a  '  Treaty  of  Toleration.' '  Diplo- 
matists, soldiers  and  sailors,  added  Sir  Robert  Hadfield, 
are  too  "professionally  myopic"  to  be  of  any  use  on 
such  a  committee.  What  is  certain  is  that  France  and 
Germany  might  indeed  come  rapidly  to  terms  if  their 
national  affairs  could  but  be  treated  as  mere  "  business 
propositions  ";  if,  in  a  word,  there  were  no  such  complica- 
tions of  their  problem  as  have  been  set  forth  in  this 
attempt  to  survey  the  world's  history  from  the  Treaty 
of  Frankfort  to  the  eve  of  the  Great  War  of  1914,  and 
if  theoretical  economists  might  only  be  free  to  settle  the 
question  of  international  relations  by  leaving  out  all 
the  factors  that  make  their  solution  difficult.  It  would 
be  possible  to  adopt  the  principle  of  Sir  Robert  Had- 
field's  plan,  provided  the  conditions  just  indicated  have 
previously  been  laid  down  ;  and,  indeed,  this  principle 
is  sure  to  be  applied  before  long  in  a  rational  way ;  but 
if  ever  England  were  complacently  to  favour  the  diver- 
sion of  German  expansion  from  Asia  towards  Africa,  not 
only  would  she  undo  the  work  of  twenty  years,  and 
weaken  her  French  ally,  but  she  would  be  preparing  for 
herself  a  future  complicated  by  fresh  problems.  She 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     309 

would  be  furthering  German  combinations  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  Atlantic  coaling  stations  just  at  the  critical 
moment  of  the  opening  of  the  Panama  Canal.  England 
should  afford  Germany  certain  opportunities  for  working 
off  her  surplus  energy,  her  surplus  production  in  Asia, 
but  should  avoid  any  arrangement  permitting  her  to 
become  a  greater  rival  than  she  already  is  along  the 
Atlantic  trade  routes.  Thus,  instead  of  confirming  the 
treaty  of  1898  relative  to  the  eventual  dismemberment 
of  the  Portuguese  Colonies,  she  should  seek  for  a  fresh 
arrangement  undoing  that  dangerous  and  incomprehen- 
sible pact.  Within  the  last  fourteen  years  the  conditions 
determining  the  balance  of  power  in  the  world  have  been 
altogether  altered  :  so  that  there  are  obviously  some 
things  that  England  can  do,  and  some  things  she  cannot 
do,  whenever  the  time  may  come  for  "  talking  business." 
But  she  can  do  nothing,  nor  can  either  of  her  friends  do 
anything,  with  safety,  until  they  have  one  and  all  put 
their  house  in  order.  The  question  that  presses  is  :  In 
what  does  that  operation  consist  ? 

in 

Both  France  and  England  are  now  facing  the  delicate 
and  urgent  obligation  of  an  electoral  and  constitutional 
reform  which  shall  either  suppress  or  discipline  those 
elements  of  anarchy  already  analysed.  In  Russia,  not- 
withstanding the  criticism  evoked  by  the  first  experi- 
mental efforts  to  reconcile  the  absolutism  of  the  Tsars 
with  the  interest  and  the  claims  of  an  awakened  middle 
class  and  an  awakening  fourth  estate,  the  national 
assembly  of  the  Duma  has  continued  to  justify  its  exist- 
ence. The  constitutional  regime  has  already  taken  root. 
The  agrarian  and  educational  policy  of  the  government 


310  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

and  the  Duma,  the  industrial  and  financial  progress  of 
the  community,  the  reorganization  of  the  military  and 
naval  power,  in  general  the  immense  social  and  economic 
improvement  which  the  United  States  alone  can  parallel, 
are  results  attesting  Russia's  steady  advance  in  her 
efforts  to  recover  in  Europe  the  place  lost  at  Tsushima 
and  at  Mukden.  Her  domestic  outlook  is  darkened  by 
the  grave  problem  of  assimilating  certain  nationalities 
now  constrained  to  call  her  master ;  but  in  spite  of  the 
risks  in  a  too  rapid  and  rigorous  Russification  of  certain 
subject  peoples,  her  future  has  never  been  brighter. 
While  Prussia  is  still  persecuting  the  Poles,1  Russia 
would  be  well  advised — and  more  than  ever  since  the 
rise  of  the  Balkan  Powers — to  evolve  a  Pan-Slav  policy 
characterized  at  last  by  a  more  generous  and  prudent 
treatment  of  the  Polish  nation.2 

As  for  France,  in  the  summer  of  1911  her  crying 
needs  were  the  revival  of  Authority,  and  the  restoration 
of  Constitutional  order ;  and  it  was  quite  clear  at  that 
date  that  these  ends  could  be  attained  only  by  re-estab- 
lishing the  principle  of  the  Separation  of  Powers.  The 

1  See  note,  p.  244. 

*  "  Bismarck  always  made  the  oppression  of  the  Poles  an  asset  in 
his  policy  towards  Russia,  and  succeeded  unfortunately  in  hypnotizing 
Russia  into  a  belief  that  oppression  of  the  Poles  is  likewise  a  pre- 
eminent Russian  interest.  The  joint  oppression  of  Poland  thus  became, 
and  has  remained,  a  bond  of  union  between  Germany  and  Russia. 
The  present  German  Emperor  departed  for  a  moment  from  this 
sinister  principle,  but  subsequently  reverted  to  it,  and  sanctioned 
Prince  Billow's  policy  of  expropriating  the  Prussian  Poles.  Germany 
thus  placed  in  the  hands  of  Russia  a  trump  card  which  the  Russian 
Government  has  hitherto  failed  to  use.  The  position  of  Russia  in 
Europe  might  be  immensely  strengthened,  and  her  political  pre- 
ponderance over  Germany  and  Austria-Hungary  assured  at  one  stroke, 
were  she  to  grant  her  Polish  subjects  a  measure  of  autonomy  and  to 
treat  them  as  fully  qualified  Russian  citizens"  (The  Hapaburg 
Monarchy,  by  Henry  Wickham  Steed,  p.  218.  Constable). 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     311 

policy  of  constructive  nationalism,  systematically  applied 
by  ministries  containing  statesmen  like  M.  Poincare,  M. 
Delcasse,  M.  Briand,  andM.  Bourgeois,  has  already  made 
such  progress  that  France,  at  this  hour,  in  spite  of  the 
revival  of  Socialist-Radical  cabinets,  is  the  most  compactly 
self-conscious  community  in  Europe.  The  project  for  the 
reform  of  the  electoral  law,  a  project  consisting  in  the 
substitution  of  proportional  representation  and  of  the 
scrutin  de  liste  for  the  former  scrutin  d'arrondissement, 
will,  when  it  is  adopted  by  the  French  Parliament, 
necessitate  the  formation  of  disciplined  parties  and 
reinforce  the  function  of  the  head-of-the-state.  It  will 
give  the  President  of  the  Republic  the  courage,  and 
sanction  his  right,  to  make  use  of  the  prerogative  of 
Dissolution,  already  accorded  him  by  the  Constitution 
(in  agreement  with  the  Senate),  but  hitherto  practically 
inoperative  to  the  great  detriment  of  French  public  life.1 
With  the  reinforcement  of  the  Executive,  and  the  re- 
vival of  Ministerial  responsibility,  as  a  consequence  of 
the  reaffirmation  of  the  principle  of  the  Separation  of 
Powers,  France  will  be  free  to  complete  the  task  of  re- 
organizing the  national  defence  and  of  preparing  her 
ports,  her  railways  and  her  canals  for  the  economic 
battles  of  the  future.  Foremost  among  her  preoccupa- 
tions should  be  the  construction  on  her  eastern  frontier 
of  a  canal  permitting  Dunkirk  to  become  a  rival  of 
Antwerp,  the  iron-masters  of  the  Meurthe  and  Moselle 
to  buy  their  coal  in  England  instead  of  in  Germany, 
and  the  whole  French  industrial  world  to  break  loose 
from  the  bonds  now  linking  them  to  their  German 

1  Before  M.  Raymond  Poincare  became  President  of  the  Republic 
he  formally  stated,  in  an  admirable  little  manual  entitled  Ce  que 
demande  la  Cite  (p.  54,  Hachette),  that  dissolution  was  the  natural 
guarantee  of  the  Separation  of  Powers.  "  Elle  ne  merite  pas,"  ho 
said,  "  1'iuapopularite  dont  les  evenements  1'ont  enveloppee." 


312  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

rivals.  The  industrial,  financial,  economic  organization 
of  France  has,  indeed,  now  taken  a  sportsmanlike  start, 
and  this  movement  synchronizes  with  the  revival  among 
the  younger  generation  of  a  taste  for  adventure,  a  craving 
for  responsible  action,  the  reawakening  of  a  patriotic, 
genuinely  national  spirit,  the  growth  of  religious  toler- 
ance, and  an  increasing  recognition  of  the  need  of  re- 
establishing the  secular  relations  of  France  with  the 
Vatican.  The  inconvenience,  the  absurdity  even,  of  the 
suppression  of  the  French  Embassy  at  the  Vatican,  are 
rapidly  becoming  patent  even  to  the  most  politically 
inexperienced  of  French  Jacobin  fanatics.  Even  they 
are  now  deploring  the  decay  of  the  French  protectorate 
of  Eastern  Christians,  the  ecclesiastico-political  prob- 
lems presented  by  the  declaration  of  a  French  protec- 
torate over  Morocco,  and  in  general  the  advantage 
enjoyed  by  the  rivals  of  France  who  possess  an  official 
representative  through  whom  they  may  negotiate  with 
the  Vatican  in  defence  of  their  national  interests.1 

There  remains  the  case  of  England.  Her  Constitu- 
tional problem,  which  a  year  ago  seemed  almost  insolu- 
ble, but  the  solution  of  which  has  now  been  rendered 
relatively  easy  owing  to  the  consequences  of  the  incident 
of  Agadir,  is,  after  all,  no  new  question.  It  is  twenty- 
five  years  since  one  of  the  most  suggestive  of  English 
writers,  the  author  of  Oceana,  while  pointing  out  the 
impossibility  of  there  ever  being  a  "British  Empire," 
argued  in  the  same  breath  that  nothing  was  more  feasible, 
if  only  politicians  would  cease  to  meddle,  than  a  "  Com- 
monwealth" of  the  British  nations,  held  together  by 
common  blood,  common  interest  and  a  common  pride 
in  the  great  position  which  unity  can  secure.  The 
"Commonwealth"  dreamed  of  by  Froude  is  on  the 
1  See  p.  330,  note. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     313 

point  of  hoisting  on  all  the  seas  the  flag  of  the  five  self- 
governing  nations  finally  welded  together,  not  only  by 
common  blood  and  a  common  pride,  but  by  the  sense 
of  a  common  danger.  Under  the  dissolvent  of  Free 
Trade  the  "British  Empire"  has  been  steadily  dis- 
integrating for  more  than  a  generation.  The  divergency 
of  fiscal  policies  engendered  a  divergency  of  foreign 
policies.  At  one  moment  the  Imperial  Government 
would  conclude  a  commercial  treaty  with  Japan  for  the 
sole  benefit  of  the  United  Kingdom,  at  another  Canada 
signed  similar  treaties  with  France  and  Germany  with- 
out regard  to  their  effect  upon  British  trade.  Then 
Canada  and  Australia  passed  Naval  Defence  Acts,  with 
the  warning  to  the  British  Admiralty  that  the  Imperial 
Government  should  be  allowed  to  use  their  battleships 
only  if  they  so  decided.  Five  separate  systems  of  com- 
mercial treaties,  five  separate  systems  of  defence,  and 
one-fifth  of  a  foreign  policy !  Such  has  been  the  agglo- 
meration that  for  many  years  has  been  passed  off  as  the 
British  Empire,  to  a  world  astounded  at  the  apathy  and 
blindness,  the  procrastination  and  the  parochial  short- 
sightedness of  England's  statesmen  and  England's  Par- 
liament. The  Mother  Island  had  taken  it  for  granted 
that  her  Colonies  were  lost  to  her,  and  had  not  even 
gone  into  mourning.  Interest  alone  holds  nations 
together,  yet  Mr.  Chamberlain  proposed  Imperial  Pref- 
erence to  unheeding  ears.  Empires  as  well  as  nations 
must  have  a  sense  of  unity  in  order  to  maintain  their 
integrity,  yet  the  dominant  forces  among  the  disjointed 
portions  of  the  British  Empire  were  centrifugal. 

But  nations  and  empires  must  have  not  only  a  sense  of 
unity ;  they  must  have  also  a  symbol  of  unity.  Viewed 
from  the  outposts  of  Empire  in  the  seven  seas,  England 
would  have  been  utterly  invisible  if  it  had  not  been  for  a 


314  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

certain  shimmer  on  the  far  horizon  which  was  identified 
as  that  of  the  splendour  of  the  British  Crown.  Amid  the 
ruins  of  her  aristocratic  traditions  and  Parliament,  the 
institution  of  the  Crown,  the  King,  the  growing  part 
played  by  the  sovereign,  the  increasing  utility  of  his  role, 
rapidly  became  apparent.  It  was  seen  that  the  King  was 
the  keystone  in  the  imperial  dome,  the  foundations  of 
which  rested  in  the  four  quarters  of  the  earth.  It  was 
discovered  that  it  was  the  sovereign  alone  who  had  been 
holding  the  Empire  together  ;  that  to  the  Dominions  the 
British  Parliament,  British  statesmen,  British  liberties 
were  nothing ;  the  Queen  and  the  King  all.  The  West 
has  found  it  difficult  to  comprehend  the  feeling  of  the 
Japanese  for  the  Mikado.  The  divinity  of  a  Mikado,  as 
the  divinity  of  an  Augustus,  is  a  notion  that  no  longer 
fits  into  the  idioms  and  frames  of  thought  of  our  radical 
democracies.  But  the  positive  reality  and  utility,  the 
practical  constitutional  value  of  the  conception,  began 
to  dawn  upon  the  mind  of  the  most  unreflecting  citizen 
of  England,  as  he  watched  the  far-away  Colonies  moving 
out  on  their  orbits,  without  need  or  thought  of  the  island 
home,  save  when  they  beheld  a  chance  gleam  of  sunlight 
on  the  British  imperial  crown.  From  having  been  a  mere 
survival,  from  having  dwindled  to  a  fairly  futile  part  of 
the  constitutional  machinery,  a  political  fiction,  a  mere 
figure-head  that  "ruled  "  but  did  not  govern,  the  sove- 
reign turned  out  to  be  the  sole  really  necessary  portion 
of  the  constitutional  edifice,  the  one  hope  of  lasting 
union,  the  only  interesting  and  essential  British  symbol 
visible  over  the  top  of  the  sea.  Thus  there  has  survived 
from  the  old  constitution  a  symbol,  the  King,  which  will 
help  to  create  the  sense  of  unity ;  and,  happily  for  the 
idea  that  he  represents,  happily  for  England,  happily  for 
the  incipient  Commonwealth  of  British  Nations  dreamed 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     315 

of  by  Froude,  the  sense  of  the  importance  of  this  symbol 
has  been  enhanced,  and,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  definitively 
affirmed,  by  the  sense  of  common  danger  created  by 
German  imperialism  and  American  commercial  rivalry. 
King  Edward  died  as  King  of  England,  Emperor  of 
India.  His  son  will  reign  as  all  that,  but  as  more. 
Shortly,  in  a  fresh  and  unexpected  sense,  he  will  be  the 
British  Imperial  Sovereign.  He  alone,  during  the  dark 
period  of  1910  and  1911,  when  British  institutions 
seemed  crumbling,  with  the  Dover  Cliffs,  into  the  sea, 
he  alone,  with  a  conscious  and  conscientious  activity, 
was  working  for  the  preservation  of  the  best  of  England's 
past,  and  for  the  adjustment  of  her  present  to  her  future. 
Grandson  of  the  Queen  who  had  maintained  intact  the 
traditions  of  the  people  that  first  gave  practical  efficiency 
to  the  idea  of  Freedom,  son  of  the  King  whose  sound 
sense  and  direct  action  were  the  most  powerful  factors 
in  the  restoration  of  the  balance  of  power  in  Europe, 
King  George,  sailor,  traveller,  practical  man-of-business, 
makes  the  tour  of  his  island  kingdom  and  of  his  imperial 
domains,  gets  himself  crowned  at  Delhi,  crowns  his  boy 
in  Wales,  holds  his  Court  in  turn  in  the  principal  British 
possessions,  and  at  the  same  time,  keenly  alive  to  practical 
things,  seeks  to  inoculate  in  a  people  "  infected  with  a 
kind  of  restlessness  exemplified  in  the  week-end  habit"1 

1  Fortnightly  Beview,  August  1,  1911:  "A  Business-like  King." 
Germany  would  seem  to  be  aware  of  the  disadvantages  of  the  '  week- 
end habit '  iii  England.  When  she  made  up  her  mind  to  startle 
Europe  by  the  'Coup  d'Agadir'  she  chose  the  date  of  July  10,  1911, 
which  was  a  Saturday.  In  consequence  of  the  deliberations  of  the 
French  Government  on  Saturday  afternoon  it  was  decided  to  telegraph 
to  London  to  the  French  Ambassador,  M.  Cambon,  directing  him  to 
find  out  from  the  English  Government  whether  they  would  send  a 
war-ship  to  Agadir  in  case  France  decided  to  do  so.  M.  Cambon 
replied  late  in  the  afternoon  thnt  Sir  Edward  Grey  was  out  of  town, 
and  would  not  be  back  until  Monday.  He  had  had  a  talk,  however, 


316  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

the  antidote  of  an  example  based  on  his  knowledge  that 
the  prosperity  of  the  oversea  dominions,  as  well  as  of 
Germany  and  of  the  United  States,  is  due  to  the  enter- 
prise and  the  dogged  industry  of  their  sons.  He  took 
over  the  direction  of  the  destinies  of  the  new  British 
Empire  (knit  together  at  present  solely l  by  the  post  and 
the  telegraph)  just  at  the  moment  when  the  problem  of 
their  union  is  taking  the  form  of  a  magnificent  joint- 
stock  enterprise  which  must  be  managed  in  the  interests 
of  the  common  shareholders.  No  sovereign  ever  had  a 
greater  opportunity.  "  The  earnest  object  of  my  life," 

with  the  permanent  Under- Secretary  of  State,  Sir  A.  Nicholson,  who, 
without  engaging  the  responsibility  of  his  chief,  declared  that  England 
would  certainly  adopt  the  policy  of  France.  The  French  Cabinet 
thereupon  deliberated  on  the  question  of  the  proper  reply  to  be  made 
to  Germany,  but  were  unable  to  make  up  their  minds.  On  the  morrow, 
Monday,  the  French  Foreign  Minister  left,  with  the  President  of  the 
Republic,  for  Holland  on  a  visit  that  could  not  be  deferred.  On  Monday 
evening  M.  Cambon  telegraphed  to  Paris  that  he  had  at  last  been  able 
to  find  Sir  Edward  Grey  at  the  Foreign  Office,  and  that  the  minister, 
while  assuring  France  of  England's  intention  to  support  her  in  her 
Moroccan  policy,  seemed  to  doubt  the  advisability  of  making  a  naval 
demonstration,  unless  France  insisted  on  doing  so.  At  all  events  the 
matter  could  only  be  settled  in  Cabinet  Council  on  Tuesday,  the  4th. 
Meanwhile  M.  Caillaux,  the  Prime  Minister  of  France,  had  decided 
not  to  send  a  ship  to  Agadir,  and  on  Tuesday  morning  he  telegraphed 
to  M.  Cambon  bidding  him  inform  the  British  Government  of  his 
decision.  The  telegram  reached  M.  Cambon  after  the  British  Cabinet 
Council  had  come  to  the  same  decision  as  M.  Caillaux, — not  to  reply 
to  the  German  challenge !  This  Aesopian  fable  teaches  that,  while 
times  and  places  often  make  timid  men  bold,  on  other  occasions  the 
same  causes  often  make  responsible  men  timid ;  and  it  likewise  teaches 
the  risks  of  the  British — and  now  the  American — '  week-end  habit. 

1  On  March  17,  1914,  however,  the  House  of  Lords  agreed  to  the 
second  reading  of  the  "  British  Nationality  and  Status  of  Aliens  Bill," 
which  represented,  as  Lord  Emmott,  Under-Secretary  for  the  Colonies, 
pointed  out,  the  final  product  of  ten  years'  negotiations  between  the 
Imperial  and  the  Dominion  Governments.  This  Bill  establishes  a 
system  of  Imperial  naturalization  on  a  uniform  basis  throughout  the 
Empire. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     317 

said  George  V.  on  his  accession,  "  will  be  to  uphold  the 
Constitutional  government  of  these  realms."  How  could 
he  know  at  the  time  that  this  great  ideal  would  so 
speedily  have  to  be  superseded  by  another,  for  the 
realization  of  which  he,  the  author  of  the  cry,  "  Wake 
up,  England!"  seems  to  have  been  predestined?  How 
could  he  divine  that  by  the  force  of  things,  the  force  of 
German  and  American  things,  there  would  be  added  to 
the  sense  of  a  common  blood  and  a  common  pride, 
cherished  by  Englishmen  all  over  the  world,  the  sense 
of  a  common  danger,  and  that  this  new  situation  would 
transform  his  task  from  that  of  "  upholding  the  con- 
stitutional government  of  his  realms"  into  that  of 
assisting  in  the  construction  of  a  brand-new  Imperial 
Constitution,  and  of  determining  the  common  functions 
of  the  United  Kingdom,  the  autonomous  Dominions  and 
the  Crown  Colonies,  all  of  them  owing  allegiance  to  but 
one  king,  one  flag,  one  Empire  ? l 

1  "  The  local  autonomy,  which  all  communities  of  the  British  race 
cherish,  and  justly  cherish,  so  much — the  right  to  manage  or  mis- 
manage their  own  affairs,  free  from  external  interference — depends 
ultimately  upon  their  capacity  to  stand  together  and  present  a  united 
front  to  any  possible  aggressor.  But  for  that  end  we  require  an 
Imperial  Constitution,  providing  for  the  separation  of  those  branches 
of  public  business  which,  like  foreign  affairs,  defence,  and  ocean  com- 
munications, are  essentially  Imperial,  from  those  which  are  mainly 
or  wholly  local,  and  for  the  management  of  the  former  by  a  new 
authority,  representative  of  all  parts  of  the  Empire,  but  undistracted 
by  the  work  and  the  controversies  which  are  peculiar  to  any  single 
part." — The  Nation  and  tlie  Empire,  by  Lord  Milner,  G.C.B. 
(Constable,  1913).  The  "complete  nationhood"  of  the  Dominions,  as 
Mr.  Sidney  Low  has  called  it  [Daily  Mail,  July  17,  1914],  received 
striking  official  recognition  in  a  despatch  which  the  Secretary  of  State 
for  the  Colonies,  Mr.  Harcourt,  sent  in  July  1914  to  the  Governor  of 
Tasmania  relative  to  the  Governor's  right  to  grant  or  withhold  a 
dissolution  of  Parliament.  Until  recently  the  Governor  of  a  Colony 
has  been  supposed  to  exercise  his  discretion  on  this  and  other  matters ; 
this  "  right,"  it  was  claimed,  was  part  of  his  royal  prerogative  as 


318  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

IV 

The  members  of  the  Triple  Entente  must  henceforth 
work  together  throughout  the  world,  and  the  speedy 
settlement  of  their  domestic  problems  is  the  necessary 
condition  of  effective  common  action.  It  remains  to 
survey  the  wide  sphere  of  their  common  action  in  the 
various  seas  and  regions  where  their  fleets  are  to 
fraternize. 

The  Northern  question  may  be  dismissed  with  a  brief 
allusion.  Of  the  active  discussion  relative  to  the  foreign 
policy  of  the  Scandinavian  States  that  has  been  going  on 
in  the  three  Northern  countries  ever  since  the  separation 
of  Norway  and  Sweden  in  1905,  only  rare  rumours  reach 
the  ears  of  Londoners  and  Parisians.  But  what  is  known 
shows  that  the  policy  of  neutrality,  strict  and  unalloyed 
neutrality,  developed  in  the  more  recent  speeches  of  both 
the  Danish  and  the  Swedish  Foreign  Ministers,  is  one 
warranting  the  belief  that  the  pact — signed  by  Germany, 
France,  Great  Britain,  Russia,  Holland,  Denmark,  and 
Sweden  in  April,  1908 — for  the  maintenance  of  the  status 
quo  in  the  countries  around  the  North  Sea  and  the  Baltic 

representative  of  the  Sovereign.  Downing  Street  ruled  in  1914  to 
support  the  Tasnianian  Premier  and  Legislature  in  a  dispute  between 
them  and  the  Governor,  and  thereby  laid  it  down  that  it  is  the 
Ministers  of  the  Dominion,  not  the  representative  of  the  Crown  and 
the  Imperial  Cabinet,  who  are  responsible  for  the  government  of  the 
Colony.  The  ancient  conception  of  the  role  of  the  Governor  in  an 
autonomous  Colony  is  thus  altogether  altered.  "  The  citizens  of  the 
Dominions  claim  for  their  governments  and  parliaments  a  status  of 
equality,  under  the  Crown,  with  those  of  the  United  Kingdom." 
Downing  Street  has  thus  formally  acknowledged  the  real  character 
of  the  evolution  that  has  taken  place  in  the  Constitution  of  the  British 
Empire.  Unless  a  brand-new  Imperial  Constitution,  based  on  some 
form  of  Britannic  Federation,  be  quickly  evolved,  the  British  Empire 
must  fall  asunder.  Cf.  p.  211. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     319 

is  perhaps  more  likely  to  be  respected  than  any  other  in- 
ternational declaration  or  treaty  now  under  the  sceptical 
scrutiny  of  the  Powers.  The  exchange  of  views  in  August 
and  September,  1912,  between  the  Foreign  Ministers  of 
the  Powers  of  the  Triple  Entente  in  St.  Petersburg, 
London  and  Paris,  and  the  visits  of  Russian  and  British 
vessels  to  Scandinavian  ports  in  September,  have  con- 
solidated the  pact  of  1898.  The  hardy  voyages  of  the 
German  "Zeppelins  "  above  the  North  Sea  merely  serve 
to  remind  the  Dutch,  the  Scandinavians,  the  English,  and 
the  French  that  in  an  alert  Triple  Entente  lies  the  one 
hope  of  peaceful  existence  in  the  waters  bathing  the  sides 
of  the  triangle  marked  by  Stockholm,  Copenhagen,  and 
Christiania.1 

The  more  immediate  scenes  of  the  action  of  the  Triple 
Entente  are  mainly  in  other  waters  and  in  other  countries. 
They  may  be  classed  under  the  general  heads  of  the  Medi- 
terranean and  the  Middle  East,  the  Far  East,  and  the 
American  Mediterranean,  the  Caribbean  Sea. 


In  the  Mediterranean  and  on  its  shores  the  policies  of 
England  and  of  France  are  for  the  first  time  in  history 
easily  assimilable.  The  lapsing  of  the  Triple  Alliance 
happily  synchronized  with  a  momentary  lull  in  the  Mace- 
donian question,  and  it  was  in  the  interest  of  the  peace 
of  the  world  that  that  Alliance  should  be  renewed  with- 
out delay.  Its  fourth  renewal  early  in  December  1912 

1  On  Friday,  November  29,  1912,  it  became  known  that  an  aerial 
navy  bill  was  about  to  be  proposed  by  the  German  War  Office  and 
Admiralty  "  for  the  creation  of  a  fleet  of  twenty  Zeppelin  airships  of 
about  920,000  cubic  feet  capacity,  capable  of  travelling  at  fifty-one 
miles  an  hour,  and  remaining  aloft  for  four  days  and  four  nights 
without  an  intermediate  landing." 


320  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

has  in  nowise  imperilled  the  naval  position  of  the  partners 
of  the  Entente  Cordiale  in  the  Mediterranean ;  it  has,  on 
the  contrary,  rendered  more  stable  than  ever  the  balance 
of  power  in  the  Middle  Sea.  Italy,  which  has  secured 
Tripoli  through  the  collusion  of  England  and  France  and 
to  the  regret,  no  doubt,  of  Austria,  as  well  as  to  the 
certain  embarrassment  of  Germany,1  seems  to  be  aware 
that  by  remaining  in  the  Triple  Alliance  she  can  not  only 
best  harmonize  her  own  antagonistic  ends,  but  also  pre- 
serve the  balance  of  power  in  the  Mediterranean  and 
establish  peace  in  Europe. 

This  seems  a  paradox.  The  reason,  however,  is  clear. 
When  Italy  adhered,  in  May  1882,  to  the  Austro- 
German  treaty  of  1879,  and  concluded  the  five  years' 
pact  which  became  known  as  the  Triple  Alliance,  she 
assumed  merely  Continental  responsibilities  :  nothing  in 
the  Alliance  offered  her  any  guarantee  as  to  the  invio- 
lability of  her  coast-line.  It  suited  Bismarck  to  foster 
Italian  jealousy  of  French  and  British  sea  power,  and, 
notwithstanding  Italy's  insistent  request,  he  refused  to 
extend  the  Alliance  to  the  Mediterranean.  This  refusal 
placed  the  subtle  Italian  partner  in  one  of  those  am- 
biguous positions  he  loves.  The  Italian  is  never  happier 
than  when  a  situation  makes  it  natural  to  try  to  invent 
a  combinazione.  Before  the  first  lapsing  of  the  Alliance 
— in  consequence  of  meditations  which  have  already  been 
analysed — Italy  arranged  a  complementary  Mediter- 
ranean Agreement  with  France.  When  France  and 
England  concluded  the  Entente  Cordiale  in  1904,  the 
Mediterranean  clauses  of  their  Arrangement  were  in- 

1  In  the  late  summer  of  1911  it  was  well  known  in  Constantinople 
that  if  Italy  did  not  go  immediately  to  Tripoli,  she  would  be  fore- 
stalled by  Germany,  seeking,  in  the  concession  of  a  North  African 
coaling  station,  a  Mediterranean  compensation  for  the  loss  of  the 
Atlantic  port  of  Agadir. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     321 

tegrally  bound  up  with  the  Anglo-Italian  and  Franco- 
Italian  understandings  with  regard  to  the  same  waters. 
Once  again,  all  the  diplomatic  roads  led  to  Rome;  all 
save  one,  the  Russian  road,  and  even  that  highway  was 
finally  opened  at  Racconigi  in  1909  (p.  325). 

Thus,  during  the  period  when  German  naval  power 
was  steadily  growing,  Germany's  ally,  Italy,  was  help- 
ing to  close  the  great  Middle  Sea  to  German  expansion. 
For  the  moment,  however,  Germany  paid  no  heed. 
Even  so  recently  as  ten  years  ago  Prince  Billow  pro- 
claimed in  the  Reichstag  that  this  state  of  things  did 
not  matter  :  such  is  Germany's  veneration  for  the  Iron 
Chancellor  that  even  the  most  deplorable  consequences 
of  his  greatest  blunders  are  patriotically  ignored  by  the 
levites  entrusted  with  the  security  of  the  ark  of  the 
Teutonic  covenant.1  Bismarck  had  refused  to  extend 
the  Triple  Alliance  to  the  Mediterranean ;  Germany 
reaped  the  consequences.  Those  consequences  were  too 
patent  for  her  not  to  try  to  remedy  the  mischief  done. 

When,  in  the  winter  of  1912,  after  Kirk-Kilisse, 
Germany  beheld  the  sudden  shattering  of  many  of  her 
plans  for  hegemony  in  the  territory  between  Buda-Pest 
and  Constantinople;  when  she  perceived  that  matters 
were  moving  so  fast  in  the  Balkans  that  if  she  did  not 
intervene  between  her  two  allies,  Austria-Hungary  and 
Italy,  those  Powers  would  probably  come  to  blows  even 
before  the  stipulated  date  of  June  28,  1913,  fixed  as 
the  limit  within  which  the  Alliance  could  be  renewed, 
Germany  acted  in  the  interests  of  European  peace  in 
urging  the  instant  renewal  of  that  pact  on  whatever 
possible  terms.  For  some  months  before  the  Balkan 
War  the  German  newspapers  had  been  insinuating  that 
Italy  would  act  wisely  in  confiding  to  the  Triple  Alliance 
1  See  pp.  51  and  157  (note),  and  p.  295. 


322  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

the  direction  of  her  Mediterranean  interests  !  No  Italian 
fish  were  caught  by  the  tinsel  of  this  fly-bait  made  in 
Berlin.  Bismarck  had  failed  to  take  the  chance  that 
Crispi  offered  him.  It  was  too  late,  in  1912,  for  the 
Italians  to  agree  to  extend  the  Triple  Alliance  to  the 
Mediterranean.  To  renew  the  Alliance  in  the  old  form, 
however,  was  an  immediate  guarantee  of  peace.  So  to 
revise  it  as  wantonly  to  introduce  German  dreadnoughts 
into  the  Mediterranean,  in  consequence  of  an  inter- 
national pact,  would  have  been  to  upset  the  whole 
balance  of  power  in  that  sea,  and  multiply  the  chances 
of  war.  The  Wilhelmstrasse,  therefore,  did  not  insist, 
and  the  Alliance  was  happily  renewed  on  the  old  terms. 
This  event  which  could  not,  and  did  not,  prevent 
Germany  from  introducing  a  small  naval  division  into 
the  Mediterranean,  was  a  positive  victory  for  peace  and 
a  negative  victory  for  the  Triple  Entente.  And  it 
should  be  said  in  this  connexion  that  if,  throughout  all 
the  negotiations  connected  with  the  peace  settlement 
consequent  on  the  first  Balkan  war,  Russia  displayed  so 
exemplary  a  prudence — not  even  seeking  the  natural 
opportunity  to  take  her  revenge  for  the  humiliations  of 
1909  and  to  realize  her  dream  of  opening  the  Dardanelles 
— her  motives  were,  in  general,  a  firm  resolution  to  work 
sincerely  in  the  interests  of  peace  and,  in  particular,  to 
avoid  any  initiative  which  would  warrant  Germany's 
raising  the  question  of  the  partition  of  the  Greek 
islands  in  a  form  permitting  that  Power,  for  instance, 
to  establish  a  naval  base  at  Alexandretta,  the  terminus 
of  one  of  the  embranchments  of  the  Baghdad  Railway 
(cf.  p.  306,  note  1). 

Thus,  unlike  the  Triple  Entente,  which  is  a  pact 
between  Powers  united  by  a  common  interest  and  by 
a  genuine  reciprocal  regard,  the  Triple  Alliance  is  an 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     323 

arrangement,  a  self-denying  ordinance,  between  three 
mortal  enemies  who  have  decided  to  grip  each  other  as 
tightly  as  they  can,  lest  if  any  one  of  them  be  given 
elbow-room  he  should  fly  at  the  others'  throats.  Again, 
when  at  Sinaia  Count  and  Countess  Berchtold  and  King 
Charles  and  Queen  Elizabeth  drank  one  another's  health 
in  honour  of  the  secret  consolidation  of  the  pact  between 
the  Emperor  Francis  Joseph  and  the  "  hero  of  Plevna," 
for  the  maintenance  of  a  Balkan  status  quo,  whatever 
the  issue  of  the  war  between  Turkey  and  the  Balkan 
League,  these  precautions  were  only  demonstrations  on 
a  smaller  scale  of  the  same  artfully  jiu-jitsu  diplomacy 
of  which  the  secondary  Powers  had  an  excellent  model 
in  the  Triple  Alliance.1  Count  Aehrenthal  revealed  to 

1  It  was  clear  that  in  1913,  in  the  then  state  of  Europe,  the  only 
prudent  jiu-jitsu  precautions  for  Rumania  were  those  that  would  link 
her  destinies  with  those  of  Bulgaria,  Greece  and  Servia  against  the 
encroachments  of  the  Triple  Alliance.  After  having  haughtily  claimed 
for  many  years — and  with  reason — not  to  be  one  of  the  Balkan  States, 
she  sought  in  January  1913,  during  the  armistice  negotiations  after 
the  Turco-Balkan  War,  and  even  after  the  rupture  of  the  negotiations 
on  January  29,  to  exact  territorial  "compensations"  of  Bulgaria,  for 
not  having  made  war  on  the  Allies  while  they  were  engaged  in  driving 
the  Turk  out  of  Macedonia  1  She  put  forward  the  plea  that  the  balance 
of  power  in  the  Balkans  had  been  upset  by  the  victory  of  the  Allies ! 
King  Charles's  efforts  to  parody  Pan-German  policy  would  hardly  have 
been  possible  but  for  the  Austro-Eumanian  understanding.  The  author 
stated  unhesitatingly  in  the  spring  of  1913,  in  the  original  edition  of 
this  book,  that  the  Austro-Eumanian  arrangement  must  either  be 
abolished  or  be  limited  by  a  frank  convention  with  the  Balkan  Powers ; 
that  indeed  a  native  "Latin"  combinazione  would  be  more  effective 
in  the  long  run  than  Hohenzollern  bluff.  Only  a  few  weeks  later,  on 
July  11,  1913,  Eumania,  breaking  her  pact  with  Austria,  invaded 
Bulgarian  territory.  She  continued  to  put  forward  as  a  pretext  the 
necessity  of  assuring  the  balance  of  power  in  the  Balkans,  but  this 
time  she  ran  no  danger  of  being  misunderstood :  Bulgaria  had  just 
wantonly  attacked  her  former  comrades  in  arms,  the  Servians  and  the 
Greeks,  of  the  Balkan  anti-Turk  Crusade  1  Eumania,  by  this  action — 
the  initiation  of  which  was  due  to  M.  Delcasse,  M.  Blondel,  the  French 
Minister  at  Bucharest,  and  Eussian  diplomacy — instantly  arrested  a 


324 

the  world  what  Austria-Hungary  thinks  of  Germany, 
and  the  retirement  of  the  germanophile  Archduke  Eugene 
from  the  commandment  of  the  Tyrol  and  Vorarlberg  in 
favour  of  Baron  Konrad  von  Hotzendorf,  former  head 
of  the  Austro-Hungarian  General  Staff,  and  the  subse- 
quent recall  of  General  Konrad  von  Hotzendorf  to  his  old 
post  in  the  place  of  General  von  Schemua,  showed  how 
Austria-Hungary  feels  about  Italy.  The  Tyrol,  in  spite 
of  the  Triple  Alliance,  has  become  an  arsenal  of  the 
national  defence,  a  fortified  camp  dominating  Italy. 


war  that  threatened  the  peace  of  the  world,  and,  by  the  same  token, 
secured  for  herself  a  prestige  and  an  independence  which  made  her 
the  arbiter  of  the  Balkans.  Nationalism  is  the  self-conscious  struggle 
of  a  people  to  maintain  its  integrity  when  it  is  exposed  to  the  gravitative 
attraction  of  a  powerful  neighbour.  By  breaking  her  pact  with  Austria 
and  by  co-operating  with  Russia  in  a  peace-policy  of  equilibrium. 
Rumania  displayed  the  finest  form  of  nationalism.  "When,  on  June  1, 
1914,  the  two  royal  families  of  Russia  and  Rumania  met  at  Constantza, 
Nicholas  II  congratulated  King  Charles  on  the  excellent  results  of  his 
policy  of  peace,  "  which  had  won  for  him  the  gratitude  of  the  nations," 
and  King  Charles,  in  turn,  who  had  just  become  a  Russian  Field- 
Marshal,  stated  it  to  be  "the  constant  and  invariable  object"  of  his 
policy  "  to  help  to  maintain  by  a  stable  equilibrium  and  by  cordial 
relations  between  all  the  States  of  this  part  of  Europe,  that  beneficent 
peace  which  alone  can  permit  the  realization  of  the  prosperity  to  which 
they  aspire."  Rumania's  action  in  invading  Bulgaria  in  the  nick  of 
time,  no  doubt  tended  to  Sing  Bulgaria  into  a  state  of  dependency  on 
the  Triple  Alliance — a  condition  marked,  indeed,  by  the  ^£'20,000,000 
loan  concluded  in  July  1914  with  German  banks,  which  reintroduces 
German  influence  into  the  Balkans,  the  German  syndicate  having 
acquired  rights  for  the  construction  of  a  railway  line  from  Haskovo  to 
Porto  Lagos,  and  of  a  harbour  at  Porto  Lagos — but  her  action  made 
her,  at  the  same  time,  persona  grata  to  Servia  and  Greece  and 
Montenegro,  the  new  frontiers  of  which  were  fixed  under  her  auspices 
by  the  Treaty  of  Bucharest  that  ended  the  Inter-Balkan  War.  The 
statu  quo  thus  created  has  entailed  savage  racial  enmities,  and  will 
maintain  the  Balkan  States  on  a  war-footing  for  an  indefinite  period. 
But  it  was  Rumania's  action  alone  that  put  a  temporary  end  to  hos- 
tilities in  the  troubled  Balkans.  The  future  is  on  the  lap  of  the  Gods ! 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     325 

The  latest  Italian  enterprise,  the  Tripolitan  Expedition, 
has  produced,  among  its  most  certain  consequences,  an 
aggravation  of  the  Austro-Italian  tension  concerning 
the  ultimate  destination  of  the  Albanian  port  of  Valona, 
the  hinterland  of  which  is  slowly  being  won  over  to 
Austrian  sympathies  by  the  steady  propaganda  of  Fran- 
ciscan monks  taking  their  orders  from  the  Ball-Platz. 
In  1904  Signer  Tittoni,  Italian  Foreign  Minister,  declared 
in  the  Chamber  that  Albania  was  not  in  itself  of  much 
importance,  but  that  its  shores  and  ports  would  ensure 
to  their  possessors  "  the  uncontested  military  and  naval 
supremacy  of  the  Adriatic.' ' l  It  is  this  statesman,  now 
Italian  ambassador  in  Paris,  who  has  been  notoriously 
the  most  assiduous  companion  of  that  Russian  ambas- 
sador, M.  Isvolski,  whose  dreams  of  offering  an  open 
Dardanelles  to  his  sovereign  were  wrecked  by  the  pre- 
mature action  of  the  members  of  the  Triple  Alliance  in 
tearing  up  the  Treaty  of  Berlin  before  Russia  was  ready. 
When  the  Tsar  and  Victor  Emmanuel  met  at  Racconigi, 
accompanied  by  their  Ministers,  the  Sovereigns  laid  the 
foundations  of  an  entente  cordiale  the  principle  of  which 
was  their  common  hostility  to  the  realization  of  German 
and  Austro-Hungarian  interests  in  the  Balkans,  and  a 
direct  consequence  of  which  was  Montenegro's  declara- 
tion of  war  in  October  1912  against  Turkey.  Italy  has 
ceased  to  be  the  Cinderella  of  the  Triple  Alliance.  Of 
the  three  members  of  that  Alliance  it  is  Germany,  after 
all,  that  has  reaped  the  least  benefit  from  the  pact  during 
the  last  ten  years.  William  II  has  done  his  best  to  keep 

1  The  Italians  have  never  forgotten  that  the  "  Latin  Sea,"  the 
Adriatic,  was  known,  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  as 
il  golfo  di  Venezia.  They  dream  of  a  railway  from  the  Adriatic  to 
the  Danube  (Scutari  -  Cladova)  counterbalancing  the  line  Vienna- 
Salonica,  and  placing  Italy  in  direct  communication  with  Servia, 
Rumania  and  Russia. 


326  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

his  two  partners  in  the  humiliating  posture  of  a  "  bril- 
liant second  "  and  a  Sancho  Panza  third.  But  Count 
Aehrenthal's  initiative  in  taking  Bosnia-Herzegovina 
was  followed  by  that  of  Signor  Giolitti  in  seizing  Tripoli 
— and  the  Teuton  leading-strings  were  snapped.  The 
consequences  of  the  Tripoli  tan  expedition  on  the  irri- 
dentist  spirit  were  immediate.  Europe  too  readily  forgets 
that  it  is  not  France  alone  which  has  an  Alsace-Lorraine 
problem  to  solve.  When,  on  November  12,  1911,  the 
Italian  journalists  at  Tripoli  offered  a  banquet  to  the 
correspondent  of  the  Temps,  M.  Jean  Carrere,  the  entire 
company  greeted  the  intervention  of  Signor  Scipio 
Sighele,  one  of  the  Nationalist  leaders,  with  the  cry : 
Vivent  Trenle  et  Trieste !  Italy  has  not  yet  achieved 
her  ideal  unity,  and  the  "  long  hopes  and  the  vast 
thoughts"  which  she  has  stifled  for  so  many  years  are 
once  again  becoming  articulate,  now  that  her  enthusiasm 
has  been  re-kindled  by  the  Roman  prowess  of  her  troops 
in  the  antique  Libya.  The  nationalist  spirit  which  has 
of  late  inflamed  Italy  is  no  new  thing ;  it  is  only  the 
resurgence  of  an  old  passion.  In  May  1891,  one  of  the 
most  eminent  political  economists  in  Italy  remarked x  :— 

"  The  idea  that  Italy  supported  Signor  Crispi  entirely  against  her 
will  still  prevails  abroad,  and  it  is  entirely  erroneous.  The  truth  is 
Signor  Crispi  personified,  in  a  perhaps  exaggerated  form,  the  megalo- 
maniac propensities  of  the  majority  of  the  governmental  classes.  He 
fell  not  because  the  country  had  had  too  much  of  his  '  grand  policy,' 
but  solely  because  he  had  hurt  certain  local  interests  .  .  .  and  the 
same  megalomania  persists  to-day,  and  his  successor  will  have  to  heed 
these  tendencies  if  he  wishes  to  continue  in  office." 

This  was  in  1891.     In  1912,  after  the  bombardment  of 

Tripoli  and  the  occupation  of  the  ^Egean,  the  Nationalist 

movement,  born  in  Florence,  was  justified  by  its  works  ; 

irridentism  took  on  a  fresh  vigour,  it  was  fired  by  a  new 

1  Letter  to  the  author  by  Signor  Vilfredo  Pareto. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     327 

hope.  But,  while  the  Turco-Italian  War  did  not  make 
for  the  peace  of  Europe,  it  made  even  less  for  the  stability 
of  the  Triple  Alliance.  These  considerations  suggest 
once  more  how  immensely  it  was  in  the  interest  of  the 
peace  of  the  world  that  that  pact  should  be  renewed — 
above  all,  in  anticipation  of  the  fatal  day  when  the 
Emperor  Francis  Joseph  is  to  hand  over  the  great  com- 
posite world  of  Austria-Hungary  to  Heaven  alone  knows 
what  destinies.1  The  Triple  Entente  has  need  of  the 

1  Notwithstanding  all  appearances  to  the  contrary,  it  seemed  prob 
able,  up  to  the  fatal  ultimatum  to  Servia  in  July  1914,  after  the 
murder  of  the  Austrian  Heir- Apparent  at  Serajevo,  that  while  the 
Emperor -King  lived  Austria  -  Hungary  would  do  its  best  to  keep 
the  peace.  What  is  known  as  the  "  Berchtold  Proposition  "  was  an 
ambiguous  appeal  made  to  Europe  in  August  1912  (by  the  Power  that 
in  1908  took  from  Turkey  Bosnia-Herzegovina)  to  assist  the  Ottoman 
Government  in  applying  a  policy  of  progressive  decentralization  in 
favour  of  the  Macedonian  nationalities,  and  to  urge  upon  the  Balkan 
States  a  peace-policy.  This  proposal,  made  while  the  French  Prime 
Minister,  M.  Poincare,  was  in  Russia  conferring  with  the  Tsar's 
Government,  aroused  suspicion  in  Europe.  It  was  generally  regarded 
as  an  attempt  to  steal  a  march  on  Russia  and  to  checkmfete  the  policy 
of  the  Triple  Entente.  Yet  the  good  faith  of  the  Austro-Hungarian 
Government  would  seem  to  have  been  demonstrated  by  the  subsequent 
course  of  events.  Count  Berchtold's  initiative  was  perhaps  one  of  the 
efficient  causes,  it  was  not  necessarily  the  final  cause,  of  the  Balkan 
Crusade.  The  Balkan  States,  crushed  between  the  Young  Turks  and 
Austria- Hungary,  fearing  both  the  growth  of  Ottoman  Imperialism 
and  the  descent  of  Austria  to  Salonica,  had— by  1911  (see  note  2, 
p.  155) — achieved  their  miraculous  union  under  the  hegemony 
of  the  Bulgarian  tsar.  Meanwhile  the  prolongation  of  the  Turco- 
Italian  war  aroused  their  dormant  ambition.  The  Ball  Platz  is  nearer 
Belgrade  and  Sofia  than  are  the  Quai  d'Orsay  or  Downing  Street. 
Austria-Hungary  was  even  more  concerned  for  the  maintenance  of 
peace  in  the  Balkans  than  France,  England  or  Russia ;  and  Count 
Berchtold  was  no  doubt  better  informed  than  the  foreign  ministers  of 
some  of  the  other  Powers  as  to  the  danger  of  immediate  war.  The 
secret  Serbo-Bulgarian  treaty  of  defensive  alliance  was  signed  on 
March  13, 1912,  and  was  probably  no  secret  for  the  Ball  Platz.  Count 
Berchtold  formulated  his  famous  proposal  calculated  to  forestall  and 
avert  just  such  irreparable  action  on  the  part  of  the  Balkan  League  as 


328  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Triple  Alliance ;  it  needs  the  Alliance  in  order  to  simplify 
its  own  problems.  As  long  as  the  Alliance  holds  together, 
so  long  are  the  prospects  of  peace  between  the  great 
Powers  of  Central  Europe  approximately  certain.  And 
the  existence  of  the  Triple  Alliance  is  no  obstacle  to  the 
friendly  ententes  between  two  of  its  members  and  this 
or  that  member  of  the  rival  group. 

Thus  in  Mediterranean  waters  the  interests  of  France 
and  England  (even — with  certain  reservations — of 
Russia)  are  now  identical.  Their  common  aim  is  main- 
took  place  in  October  1912,  when  the  four  Balkan  States  declared  war. 
At  the  same  time  he  went  to  Sinaia  to  come  to  terms  with  Rumania 
in  case  his  efforts  to  mobilize  European  diplomacy  at  the  eleventh  hour 
in  favour  of  peace  should  prove  unavailing  (see  note,  p.  323).  When 
Count  Berchtold's  fears  were  finally  realized  and  war  broke  out,  the 
Austro-Hungarian  Minister  for  War  took  the  natural  precautions ;  he 
asked  for  supplementary  grants  amounting  to  250,000,000  crowns.  To 
conclude,  as  certain  Hungarian  and  French  journalists  (see  article  by 
M.  Jacques  Bardoux  in  the  Opinion,  October  19,  1912)  concluded,  that 
"  the  Ball  Platz  must  have  worked  to  precipitate  the  Balkan  war  "  is  a 
gratuitous  interpretation.  Even  throughout  the  subsequent  period  of 
the  Inter-Balkan  War,  after  the  temporary  break-up  of  the  Balkan 
League  and  the  invasion  of  Bulgaria  by  Rumania,  Austria  prudently 
refrained  from  military  or  other  irrevocable  action.  Not  even  the 
assassination  at  Serajevo,  on  June  28,  1914,  of  the  Heir-Apparent,  the 
Arch-Duke  Francis  Ferdinand,  by  the  Bosniak  school-boy  troubled 
the  serenity  of  the  Emperor-King.  Here  is  his  comment  on  that 
event :  "  Le  vertige  d'un  petit  nombre  d'hommes  induits  en  erreur  ne 
saurait  ebranler  les  liens  sacres  qui  nous  unissent,  moi  et  mes  penples. 
.  .  .  Pendant  65  ans  j'ai  partag^  avec  eux  la  tristesse  et  la  joie.  .  .  . 
La  nouvelle  et  douloureuse  ^preuve  qu'il  a  plu  a  la  decision  insondable 
de  Dieu  de  m'infliger,  a  moi  et  aux  miens,  affirmera  en  moi  la  resolution 
de  persister  jusqu'd  mon  dernier  soupir  dans  la  voie  reconnue  comme 
la  meilleure  pour  le  bien  de  mes  peuples,  et  si  je  puis  uu  jour  transmettre 
a  mon  successeur  le  gage  de  leur  affection  comme  un  legs  precieux,  ce 
sera  la  plus  belle  recompense  de  ma  sollicitude  paternelle  &  leur 
egard."  A  few  days  later  the  Emperor  Francis  Joseph  seemed  to  go 
mad.  He  authorized  the  ultimatum  to  Servia,  which  vindictive  Magyar 
animosity  and  Pan-German  ambition  dictated  to  his  Government,  and 
which  precipitated  a  great  European  War. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     329 

tenance  of  an  open  sea  :  the  one  for  the  security  of  her 
Carthaginian  naval  base  at  Bizerta,  and  because  of  the 
need  of  an  unencumbered  highway  for  the  transport  of 
her  army  corps  or  even  of  her  black  troops  in  case  of  an 
European  war;  the  other  because  the  Mediterranean, 
which  is  one  of  the  great  central  portions  of  the  maritime 
world,  is  also  the  highroad  of  the  chief  purveyors  of 
England's  food-supplies,  and  will  shortly  be  one  of  the 
two  trade-routes  linking  Portsmouth  to  the  pipe-line  of 
the  Anglo-Persian  Oil  Company.1  The  military  corre- 
spondent of  The  Times  has  put  a  part  of  the  case  very 
neatly : — 

"  It  is  not  in  our  interest  that  the  trade  of  the  Bosphorus  and  the 
Dardanelles  should  suffer  considerable  interruption.  It  is  not  in  our 
interest,  nor  in  that  of  Russia,  Rumania,  or  Turkey  that  the  islands  of 
the  ^Egean,  which  have  good  harbours,  and  which  can  enable  ships 
based  upon  them  to  control  the  trade  issuing  from  the  Dardanelles, 
should  rest  in  the  hands  of  a  strong  and  unfriendly  naval  Power. 
Our  interests,  and  those  of  Russia  in  particular,  are  identical  in  this 
respect,  and  if  hereafter  the  Black  Sea  fleet  of  Russia  were  to  be 
permitted  by  international  agreement  to  steam  into  the  Mediterranean, 
we  should  probably  nowadays  make  no  opposition." 

In  a  word,  the  situations  that  have  already  arisen, 
that  are  arising,  or  that  are  bound  to  arise  in  conse- 
quence of  the  Turco-Italian  War,  of  the  Herculean 
efforts  of  the  Balkan  League  to  clean  up  the  Augean 
stables  of  Macedonia,  and  of  the  Second  Balkan,  or 
Inter-Balkan  War,  form  an  interesting  illustration  of  the 

1  England  has  laid  down  or  is  adapting  250  warships  of  different 
classes  for  the  Fleet  that  are  partly  or  wholly  dependent  on  oiL  On 
June  18,  1914,  the  House  of  Commons  adopted  by  254  votes  to  18  a 
motion  authorizing  the  purchase  of  share  or  loan  capital  of  the  Anglo- 
Persian  Oil  Company  to  the  amount  of  j£2, 200.000,  thereby  rendering 
maintenance  of  a  safe  trade  route  in  the  Mediterranean  a  more  vital 
national  interest  than  ever,  and  greatly  increasing  England's  respon- 
sibilities in  the  Middle  East.  As  already  remarked  (p.  259),  "  a 
country  requires  the  army  and  the  navy  of  its  economic  policy." 


330  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

general  drift  of  the  time,  the  present  phenomenon  of 
nationalistic  concentration  in  resistance  to  the  disinte- 
grating action  of  cosmopolitan  economic  forces ;  while, 
viewed  in  the  light  of  politics  and  diplomacy,  they  show 
that  the  present  grouping  of  the  Powers,  in  the  interests 
of  world  peace  and  equilibrium,  is  rational,  and  that  it 
is  likely,  for  yet  a  considerable  period,  to  remain  what 
it  is  to-day.  At  all  events,  it  is  clear,  since  that  is  the 
immediate  question  in  hand,  that  the  members  of  the 
Triple  Entente  must  hold  together  in  the  Mediterranean 
and  the  Middle  East.  Even  the  eventual  opening  of  the 
Straits  need  not,  and  will  not,  be  regarded  as  a  matter 
that  in  any  way  concerns  the  principle  of  the  main- 
tenance of  the  integrity  of  the  Ottoman  Empire.  But 
it  is  impossible  to  treat  it  merely  as  a  question  of  political 
economy,  a  problem  with  which  national  honour  and 
national  prestige  have  nothing  to  do,  an  operation  that 
can  be  accomplished  solely  by  international  finance  and 
by  commercial  treaty.  If  it  could  be  thus  isolated,  the 
Time  Spirit  would  never  have  solved  an  historic  problem 
more  neatly  nor  offered  an  object-lesson  more  charac- 
teristic of  the  time.  But  it  cannot  thus  be  isolated.  It 
has  to  be  considered  in  connexion  with  the  whole  question 
of  the  balance  of  power  in  the  Mediterranean,  a  question 
that  includes,  as  has  been  seen,  the  ultimate  partition  of 
the  "  Greek  "  islands,  and  such  immediate  realities  as  the 
French  protection  of  all  the  Eastern  Christians.1  Italy's 

1  In  1905,  after  M.  Loubet's  visit  to  Rome,  when  the  relations 
between  France  and  the  Vatican  were  particularly  strained,  the 
Bouvier  Ministry  heedlessly  displayed  its  friendship  for  Italy  by 
granting  the  religious  orders  in  the  East  the  privilege  of  renouncing 
French  protection  for  that  of  Italy.  A  few  days  later  at  the  Congress 
of  the  "  French  Alliance  "  in  Lyons  two  eminent  "  Radical  Eepublican  " 
Senators  fell  into  line  behind  the  Ambassador  and  the  Academician, 
blaming  French  diplomacy  for  having  so  heedlessly  blundered  in 
ceding  to  Italy  the  secular  rights  of  France  as  protectress  of  the 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     331 

cravings  for  possession  of  Rhodes,  if  satisfied  by  the 
Powers,  in  consequence  of  a  European  Conference,  would 
imply  compensations  to  those  Powers  commensurate  with 
the  importance  of  the  concession.1  Rhodes  commands 

Eastern  Christians.  From  1905  to  1911  thirty-three  Italian  monastic 
establishments  in  the  East  substituted  the  Italian  for  the  French  flag. 
When  the  Turco-Italian  war  broke  out,  and  the  Italians  were  expelled 
from  Turkey,  the  Italian  monks  who  had  remained  under  French 
protection,  as  well  as  other  Italian  monks  who  had  accepted  the 
protection  of  Italy,  appealed  for  protection  to  the  French  Consuls. 
After  the  war  the  Italians  wondered  whether  France  would  try  to  keep 
under  her  protection  the  Italian  monks  who  during  the  war  rushed  to 
the  shelter  of  the  tricolour.  The  Vatican  still  remains  anti-French 
and  pro-Italian.  But  French  patriotism  is  no  longer  what  it  was 
in  the  days  of  M.  Combes.  M.  Poincare  is  as  well  aware  as  was 
Gambetta  that  anti-clericalism  ought  not  to  figure  on  the  list  of  French 
exports.  On  November  21,  1912,  while  the  Turks  and  Bulgarians 
were  still  facing  each  other  hi  the  Tchataldja  lines,  he  informed  the 
Ottoman  Government  that  France,  "  acting  as  the  Protectress  of  the 
Eastern  Christians,  would  be  obliged  to  hold  the  Ottoman  Government 
responsible  for  any  violence  exercised  against  them."  It  was  clear 
that  the  resolute  courage  of  the  French  Prune  Minister  would  have 
far-reaching  consequences.  In  the  early  spring  of  1914  M.  Maurice 
Barres  (who  is  as  characteristic  a  spokesman  of  the  reflex  intuitions 
of  the  French  temperament  as  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling  is  of  British 
sentiment),  acting  partially,  perhaps,  at  the  suggestion  of  his  friend 
M.  Poincare,  then  President  of  the  Republic,  set  out  on  a  tour  of 
inspection  amid  the  traditional  sites  of  French  influence  in  the  East. 
His  report  of  the  decadence  of  these  establishments,  and  his  proposals 
for  remedying  the  evil,  attracted  wide  attention.  At  the  reception 
given  at  the  French  Embassy  in  Constantinople  on  July  14,  1914,  the 
Ambassador,  M.  Bompard,  acknowledged  that  the  future  of  French 
prestige  was  "menaced"  in  the  East  in  consequence  of  the  expulsion 
of  certain  religious  orders  from  France,  and  praised  M.  Barres  for  his 
patriotic  campaign. 

1  In  the  Preliminaries  of  Peace  signed  between  Turkey  and  Italy 
at  Ouchy  (October  16,  1912),  Italy  agreed  to  restore  to  Turkey  the 
JEge&n  Islands  already  occupied  by  her.  But  for  the  realization  of 
her  promise  she  imposed  certain  conditions  which  necessitated  the 
maintenance  of  her  garrisons  in  the  ^Egean  not  only  during  the  war 
between  Turkey  and  the  Balkan  League  and  the  Inter- Balkan  War, 
but  until  the  Powers  should  take  in  hand — either  by  a  Conference  or 


332  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

the  route  of  the  Dardanelles,  Asia  Minor,  and  the  Suez 
Canal.  It  counterbalances  Cyprus  and  menaces  Malta 
and  Bizerta.  Even  the  presence  of  the  future  Russian 
Black  Sea  fleet  in  the  Mediterranean  could  not  suffice,  in 
itself,  to  compensate  the  Triple  Entente  for  the  sudden 
shock  given  to  the  present  relations  of  the  fleets  of  the 
Entente  Cordiale  by  the  establishment  of  the  House  of 
Savoy  in  the  citadel  where  the  Knights  of  St.  John  re- 
pulsed the  troops  of  Mahomet  II.  The  settlement  of  the 
questions  suddenly  forced  upon  the  attention  of  the 
members  of  the  Triple  Entente  by  the  turn  taken  by 
the  Turco-Italian  War,  by  the  success  of  the  Balkan 
League,  and  by  the  Inter-Balkan  War,  will  be  the 
supreme  test  of  the  solidity  of  that  pact  and  of  the 
intelligence  of  French,  British,  and  Russian  statesmen. 

by  war — the  whole  question  of  the  revision  of  the  Treaty  of  Berlin. 
Such  a  Conference  did,  indeed,  take  place  in  London  after  the  war 
between  Turkey  and  the  Balkan  League.  By  the  Treaty  of  London 
the  question  of  the  ultimate  disposition  of  the  JEgean  Islands  was  left 
to  be  decided  by  the  Powers.  They  agreed  to  leave  to  Greece  the 
islands  conquered  by  her,  and  this  clause  was  accepted  by  Turkey. 
The  practical  application  of  the  Treaty  of  London,  however,  was 
complicated  by  certain  effects  of  the  Treaty  of  Bucharest,  which  put  an 
end  to  the  Inter-Balkan  War,  and  fixed  the  conditions  of  the  existing 
balance  of  power  in  the  Balkans  (see  p.  323,  note).  Owing  to  the 
transfer  of  territories  from  one  Power  to  another,  tribal,  almost  racial, 
migrations  ensued.  The  Turkish  and  the  Greek  populations  were  the 
chief  sufferers  during  this  process  of  readjustment  attendant  on  the 
application  of  the  Treaty  of  Bucharest,  and  at  one  moment  (in  May 
and  June,  1914)  the  tension  was  such  between  Athens  and  Constanti- 
nople that  Europe  feared  the  outbreak  of  war.  Just  at  this  juncture, 
June  13,  Greece  formally  annexed  Chios  and  Mitylene.  This  action, 
as  has  been  seen,  was  in  entire  consonance  with  the  Treaty  of  London, 
but  that  Treaty  had  as  yet  received  no  positive  sanction  on  the  part 
of  the  Porte.  Meanwhile  both  Greece  and  Turkey  are  feverishly 
increasing  their  naval  force.  The  Italian  promises  made  at  Ouchy 
remain  still  unfulfilled,  although,  by  the  settlement  arrived  at  in 
London,  the  Powers  agreed  that  none  of  the  ^Egean  Islands  should  be 
permanently  occupied  and  maintained  by  any  one  of  them. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     333 

Even  before  the  outbreak  of  the  Turco-Balkan  War, 
after  six  months  of  the  Italo-Turkish  War,  when  Italy 
had  seized  more  than  one-third  of  the  islands  of  the 
^gean.  and  Germany,  her  ally,  had  announced  the 
intention  of  placing  in  the  North  Sea  a  fleet  the  equal 
of  that  of  England,  then  at  last  there  was  belated  talk 
in  England  of  an  alliance  with  France.  Even  Lord 
Haldane,  whom  a  German  foreign  office  communique  in 
1906  had  described  as  "  a  very  germanophile  minister,"1 
warned  his  compatriots  that  they  were  "  getting  slack  " 
over  questions  of  national  defence,  and  he  added :  "In 
no  distant  time  we  ought  to  be  the  most  powerful  mili- 
tary and  naval  nation  combined  that  the  world  has  ever 
seen."  The  disinterested  outsider  who  overhears  such 
words  as  these  can  only  reply :  "  There  is  no  time  to  be 
lost." 

Kirk-Ritual  marks  the  end  of  an  epoch,  the  Bis- 
marckian,  and  the  beginning  of  a  new  era,  not  merely 
of  European,  but  of  world  history.  Thirty-nine  years 
before  the  discovery  of  America  the  Turks  took  Con- 
stantinople. Four  hundred  and  fifty-nine  years  later 
Turkey  virtually  ceased  to  be  a  European  Power. 
Although,  in  consequence  of  Bulgarian  treason  to  the 
cause  of  Balkan  Unity,  Turkey  ultimately  recovered 
Adrianople  from  which  she  had  been  driven,  she  has,  in 
reality,  been  thrust  back  into  Asia  by  a  military  coalition 
of  the  small  Slav  States.  This  is  the  first  result  of  the 
Balkan  War  of  1912.  What  are  the  consequ:nces  of  that 
result  ?  They  are  numerous  and  remarkable. 

The  War  lias  put  an  end  to  the  dream  of  Catherine  II : 
the  road  to  Byzantium  is  closed  to  Russia.  At  the  same 
time  the  enforced  concentration  of  the  Turks  in  Asia  will 

1  Deutsche  Revue,  September  1906,  article  on  "  Germany  and 
Foreign  Policy." 


334  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

oblige  Russia  to  exercise  special  vigilance  in  the  region 
between  the  Black  Sea  and  the  Caspian,  and  particularly 
in  her  sphere  of  influence  in  Armenia  [see  note  1,  p.  306]. 
But  while  Russia  has  been  arrested  in  her  overland  march 
to  the  Middle  Sea,  Austria  has  been  arrested  as  well,  and 
Germany  also :  a  new  Slav  empire,  a  potential  United 
States  of  Balkany,  is  taking  the  place  left  vacant  by  the 
Ottomans,  closing  the  road  to  Sakmica,  and  the  Pan- 
German  hopes  of  eventually  making  Trieste  an  integral 
part  of  the  national  patrimony  of  Greater  Germany  have 
thus  been  dissipated.1  In  other  words,  the  rise  of  the 
Balkan  States,  provided  they  succeed  in  maintaining  their 
union — if  they  devise  a  workable  Federation,  which  will 
lift  them,  as  allied  Powers,  to  the  dignity  of  a  Quadruple, 
or  even  a  Balkan  Triple  Entente  capable  of  assuring  their 
political  and  economic  independence  in  face  of  the  Triple 
Entente  and  the  Triple  Alliance2 — will  have  effectually 
altered  some  of  the  most  important  factors  of  world- 
politics.  Certain  constant  quantities  hitherto  figuring 

1  Mr.  H.  Wickham  Steed  says  justly  (p.  275  of    The  Hapsburg 
Monarchy)  that  Germany's  Drang  nach    Triest  "  has  always  been, 
and  remains,  a  much  more  positive  and  practical  factor  of  European 
politics  than  the  Austro- Hungarian  Drang  nach  Osten,  or  the  dream 
of  a  '  March  to  Salonica.'  " 

2  It  is  as  true  to-day  (1914)  as  it  was  in  the  springtime  of  1913, 
before  the  creation  of  an  "  independent "  Albania,  that  a  quick  and 
ingenious  way  for  them  to  cement  their  union  would  be  to  insist  on 
making  Albania  a  kind  of  Balkan  Reichsland,  the  keystone  of  their 
Federal  Constitution — a  territory  belonging  to  all  the  Balkan  States 
but  monopolized  by  none,  and  nominally  governed  by  rotatory  dele- 
gates of  the  several  members  of  the  Balkan  League.     Austria  alone 
would  object  to  this  solution  for  the  Albanian  Question;  Italy  would 
not  complain.     The  author  prophesied,  in  the  early  editions  of  Problems 
of  Power,  that  the  creation  of  a  vaguely-defined  Albania,  overlapping 
the  region   of  the  Servian  conquests,  in  order  to   appease  Austria, 
would  keep  the  Eastern  Question  still  open.     The  history  of  South - 
Eastern  Europe  during  1913  to  1914  was  the  comic  but  melancholy 
continuation  of  his  vain  warning. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     335 

in  one  entire  series  of  problems  have  suddenly  been 
eliminated.  The  statesmen  most  embarrassed  by  this 
alteration  of  the  accustomed  political  formulas  are  those 
of  the  Triple  Alliance.  The  perplexity  of  France,  England 
and  Russia  is  comparatively  slight.  These  three  countries 
have  been  able  to  settle  down  to  the  solution  of  the 
modified  problems,  without  undue  anxiety  as  to  their 
ability  to  integrate  the  new  factors.  Germany  and 
Austria,  on  the  contrary,  suddenly  confronted  by  Kirk- 
Kilisse,  were  called  on  to  deal  with  an  unknown  set  of 
variables  of  uncertain  bearing  and  value.  All  they  really 
know  to-day  is  that  Bismarck  blundered ;  and  that  the 
Balkan  factors  in  the  problems  of  the  modern  world  are, 
after  all,  turning  out  to  be  worth  more  than  the  pre- 
historic and  legendary  bones  of  the  Pomeranian  grenadier. 
As  a  result  of  the  Balkan  Wars,  the  German  drang 
nach  Osten  was  summarily  checked,  and  Austria  called 
back  westward.  It  has  already  been  shown  that  the 
Balkan  ambitions  of  Austria  were  the  result  of  her  dis- 
asters. Napoleon  drove  her  out  of  Italy  and  Germany, 
and  offered  her  Istria  and  Dalmatia.  Bismarck,  con- 
tinuing the  work  of  Napoleon,  took  from  her  Venice, 
promised  her  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina,  and,  constructing 
a  solid  German  bulwark  at  her  back,  launched  her  on  her 
perilous  voyage  down  the  Danube.  He  gave  her  a  free 
pass  across  Macedonia,  and  thereby  lured  her  forth  on 
her  ambiguous  destiny.  Although  Austria  is  a  Power 
essentially  German,  Bismarck  sought  to  make  her  Slav ; 
and  she  went  on  assimilating  the  territories  of  the  Slavs 
until  she  became  positively  "saturated"  with  them. 
"Saturated"  is,  indeed,  the  very  word  employed  by 
Comte  d'Aehrenthal,  the  first  of  her  public  men  to  recoil 
before  the  consequences  of  pursuing  a  German,  rather 
than  a  purely  Austrian,  policy.  When  Uskub  and  Ipek 


336  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

were  captured  by  the  Servians  six  million  men  of  their 
blood  in  Austria-Hungary  applauded.     Eleven  million 
Germans  and  eight  million  Hungarians  govern  to-day  in 
Austria-Hungary  some  twenty-live  million  Slavs.     But 
for  the  War  of  the  Balkan  League  and  the  Inter-Balkan 
War,  Austria  would  have  gone  on  thus  absorbing,  or  try- 
ing to  absorb,  the  Balkan  Slavs,  and  she  would  soon 
have  awaked  to  the  fact  that  she  had  become  a  sort  of 
pudding  stone  of  peoples,  a  Plural  Monarchy  ripe  for  dis- 
integration.    To  have  played  much  longer  the  role  of 
Prussian  vassal  would  have  been  to  substitute  for  the 
Eastern  Question  a  much  more  complicated  Austrian 
Question.     The  victories  of  the  Balkan  League  and  the 
Second  Balkan  War  came  at  the  "  psychological  moment. ' ' 
Austria  must  perforce  alter  her  national  policy.     She  is 
thrust  back  upon  herself.    She  is  given,  for  the  first  time 
since  1878 — for  the  first  time  since  Sadowa! — the  oppor- 
tunity to  meditate  on  her  real  interests,  and  evolve  a 
self-respecting   national   policy,  while   eliminating   the 
germs  of  anarchy,  fast  propagating  in  her  loosely-knit 
composite  empire.1     Kirk  -  Kilisse,  which  has   stopped 
the  German  offensive  in  the  Balkans,  and  the  rise  of 
Rumania,   which   has   established  Balkan  equilibrium, 
ought  to  have  been  a  blessing  in  disguise  to  Austria. 

On  September  17,  1877,  Crispi,  who  was  then  Pres- 
ident of  the  Italian  Chamber  of  Deputies,  and  who  had 
been  sent  by  the  Italian  Government  on  a  confidential 
mission  to  Berlin,  was  received  by  Bismarck,  with  whom 
he  had  a  long  and  remarkable  conversation,  carefully 
reported  in  his  Memoirs.  During  this  conversation 
Bismarck  said  to  the  Italian  statesman :  "I  cannot 
conceive  of  a  case  in  which  Austria  would  be  our 

1  See  note  1,  p.  12,  and  the  chapter  " Foreign  Policy"  in  Mr.  Henry 
Wickham  Steed's  The  Hapsburg  Monarchy  (Constable,  1913). 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     337 

enemy."'  Crispi  replied  that  Austria  at  the  time 
evidently  stood  in  need  of  German  support,  since  she 
had  to  restore  her  financial  situation  and  reconstruct 
her  army;  but  "Austria,"  he  added,  "cannot  look 
favourably  on  the  new  German  Empire." 

"  You  say,"  continued  Crispi,  "  that  Germany  has  no  interest  in  the 
Eastern  Question.  Yet  you  cannot  forget  that  the  Danube  is  to  a 
large  degree  a  German  river ;  it  flows  through  Eatisbonne,  and  is  the 
channel  of  German  trade  to  the  Black  Sea.  At  all  events,  we  Italians 
cannot,  like  you,  ignore  the  Eastern  Question.  ...  If  the  Great 
Powers  were  to  agree  to  abstain  from  all  conquest  in  the  Balkan 
provinces,  and  decide  that  the  territory  taken  from  the  Turks  should 
be  left  to  the  native  populations,  we  should  have  nothing  to  say.  But 
it  is  said  that  Eussia,  in  order  to  conciliate  Austria,  has  offered  the 
latter  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina.  Now,  Italy  could  not  permit  Austria 
to  occupy  those  territories.  In  1866,  as  you  know,  the  kingdom  of 
Italy  was  left  without  frontiers  in  the  Eastern  Alps.  If  Austria  were 
to  obtain  new  provinces,  strengthening  her  position  in  the  Adriatic, 
our  country  would  be  caught  in  a  vice,  and  exposed  to  invasion  at  the 
pleasure  of  the  neighbouring  empire.  You  ought  to  help  us.  We  are 
loyal  to  treaties  and  demand  nothing  of  anybody.  You  ought  to 
dissuade  Count  Andrassy  to-morrow  from  any  wish  to  take  over 
Ottoman  territory." 

"  Austria,"  replied  Prince  Bismarck,  "  is  pursuing  an  excellent  policy 
at  present.  Only  one  case  could  arise  that  would  cause  a  rupture 
between  Austria  and  Germany,  namely  a  difference  between  the 
policies  of  the  two  Governments  in  Poland.  .  .  .  We  cannot  allow 
the  establishment  of  a  Catholic  kingdom  on  our  frontiers.  It  would 
be  a  France  in  the  North.  We  already  have  one  France.  We  should 
then  have  two,  which  would  naturally  be  allied,  and  we  should  be 
between  two  enemies.  .  .  .  Austria  knows  we  are  loyal  friends.  She 
is  following  a  good  course,  and  has  no  reason  to  change.  If  she  did 
change,  and  became  the  protectress  of  Catholicism,  we  should  change 
too,  and  then  we  should  be  with  Italy.  .  .  .  Don't  try,  by  exciting 
her  suspicions,  to  provide  Austria  with  a  pretext  to  change  her  policy. 
The  Danube  does  not  concern  us.  It  is  navigable  only  from  Belgrade. 
At  Eatisbonne  there  are  only  a  few  rafts.  Bosnia,  the  whole  Eastern 
Question,  is  of  no  interest  to  Germany.  If  it  became  a  cause  of 
quarrel  between  Austria  and  Italy,  it  would  distress  us  to  see  two 
friends  fighting  whom  we  wish  to  see  living  in  peace.  Moreover,  if 
Austria  took  Bosnia,  Italy  could  take  Albania,  or  some  other  territory 
en  the  Adriatic." 

z 


338  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

It  is  more  than  thirty-five  years  since  this  conver- 
sation took  place.     Read  in  the  light  of  the  argument 
of  the  present  book,  there  is  not  a  sentence,  there  is 
scarcely  a  word,  in  it  that  is  not  rich  in  suggestion. 
"I  cannot  conceive  of  a  case  in  which  Austria  would 
be  our  enemy,"  said  Bismarck  to  Crispi,  and  in  the  same 
breath  the  same  Bismarck  remarked  :  "  We  cannot  allow 
the  establishment  of  a  Catholic  kingdom  "  on  our  frontiers. 
Yet,  by  the  Balkan  Wars,  Austria  was  turned  back  west- 
ward well  up  under  the  German  bastions,  and  it  was 
the  Austria  of  the  grandiose,  politico-religious  Euchar- 
istic  Congress  of  1912.     She  had  struggled  for  more  than 
a  generation,  against  her  German  birthright,  to  become 
Slav  and  Balkan ;  she  was  constrained  at  last  to  renew 
her  devotion  to  her  ancestral  German  gods  or  to  break 
the  peace.     The  Hapsburgs  are  an  older  race  than  the 
Hohenzollerns ;  they  wore  an  Imperial  crown  350  years 
before  William  of  Prussia  passed  under  the  arch  of  the 
Place  de  1'Etoile  in  Paris.     "I    cannot  conceive  of  a 
case  in  which  Austria  would  be  our  enemy!"     When 
a   victorious   Balkan   League   drove  the  Turks  out  of 
Europe  the  potential  "case''  arrived.     If  Austria  had 
learned  the  whole  lesson   of    the  winter  of    1912,  her 
rulers — who  were  dumbfounded  (and  who  can  wonder  ? ) 
by  the  sudden  shattering  of  the  dreams  of  a  generation 
— would  with  statesmanlike  calm  have  readjusted  their 
policy  to  the  new  exigencies  of   the  situation.     They 
would  have  understood  that  the  victory  of  the  Balkan 
States  had  at  last  made  it  possible  for  their  country  to 
assert,  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  Germany,  her   equal 
moral   rights   and   her   national   dignity;    they   would 
frankly  and  loyally  have  accepted  the  new  status  quo. 
Austria,   as   the   nearest    neighbour   of   the   new    Slav 
federation,  would  have  learned  to  live  in  good  inter- 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     339 

national  comity  with  States  whose  economic  future  was 
bound  up  with  her  own.1  No  consequence  of  the  Balkan 
War  was  more  interesting  than  this :  the  Austria  that 
Germany  seemed  to  have  bewitched  into  pursuing  the 
unending  task  of  following  out  the  Bismarckian  plan  ; 
the  blind  blonde  pathetic  giant,  doomed  to  "  toil  at 
the  mill  with  slaves  "  for  the  Wilhelmstrasse,  was  finally 
liberated.  The  Philistines  had  decided  to  do  their 
work  themselves.  Austria  had  so  long  been  used  to 
taking  orders  from  Berlin  that  when  the  task  Berlin 
had  set  her  was  suddenly  interrupted  her  very  destiny 
seemed  ended.  She  made  a  magnificent  effort  to 
survive;  in  December  1912  she  converted  the  loosely- 
knit  agglomeration  of  peoples  ruled  by  Francis  Joseph 
into  a  compact  bristling  camp,  with  the  object  of  show- 
ing the  world  she  was  a  nation.  It  is  certain  that  the 
spectators  most  impressed  were  the  Germans.  Kirk- 
Kilisse  should  have  emancipated  not  merely  the  Balkans. 
It  might  have  marked  the  rebirth  of  German  Austria. 

But  the  mobilization  of  Austria,  and  its  causes,  did 
not  merely  constitute  a  lesson  for  Germany.  They  were 
also  a  warning  for  Italy.  Italy,  indeed,  as  has  already 
been  seen,  had  no  need  of  such  a  warning.  She  has 
always  had  a  perfectly  clear  idea  of  the  peculiar  nature  of 
the  armed  neutrality  and  reciprocal  distrust  which  are 

1  The  economic  consequences  of  the  Balkan  Wars  are  for  Austria- 
Hungary  far  more  serious  than  the  political.  Before  the  war  its  trade 
with  Turkey  exceeded  its  entire  trade  with  all  the  Balkan  States. 
Turkey  was  satisfied  with  a  11  per  cent,  ad  valorem  tariff,  whereas 
the  duties  imposed  by  Bulgaria  and  Servia  on  such  articles  as  sugar, 
timber,  leather,  men's  underwear,  beer,  etc.,  are  most  onerous  for 
Austrian  industry.  The  United  States  of  Balkany  may  seek,  by  a 
Balkan  zollverein,  to  close  their  markets  to  Austrian  and  German 
trade.  Thus  economic,  quite  as  much  as  political,  apprehensions 
accounted  for  Austria's  attitude  during  the  Balkan  Wars,  and  deter- 
mined its  subsequent  policy. 


340  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

the  very  basis  of  the  pact  uniting  her,  in  a  defensive 
alliance,  to  her  partners  in  the  Triplice.  "  Italy  could 
not  permit  Austria  to  occupy  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina," 
said  Crispi  to  Bismarck  in  1879,  and  Bismarck  retorted 
jauntily :  "  Do  what  you  like  about  the  Eastern  Ques- 
tion ;  we  have  no  interest  in  the  Balkans ;  if  Austria 
takes  Bosnia,  Italy  could  take  Albania  or  some  other 
territory  on  the  Adriatic."  Crispi  left  Bismarck  with- 
out having  obtained  satisfaction.  A  year  later  at  the 
Congress  of  Berlin,  moreover,  Italy  beheld  closed  against 
her  all  the  Adriatic  doors  of  the  Balkans  :  the  port  of 
Antivari  was  given  to  Montenegro,  and  all  the  Mon- 
tenegrin waters  were  shut  to  the  war-vessels  of  the 
nations,  yet  the  maritime  police  of  the  Montenegrin  coast- 
line was  handed  over  to  Austria,  and  Austria,  not  Italy, 
was  permitted  to  "  accord  her  consular  protection  to 
the  Montenegrin  merchant  flag."  Italy,  still  preserving 
the  memory  of  the  old  trade  route,  the  Via  di  Zenta, 
and  of  the  still  more  ancient  Roman  way,  the  Via 
Egnatia — the  very  one  followed  in  the  winter  snows 
towards  Durazzo  by  the  Servians  on  their  glorious  march 
to  the  sea — Italy  came  forth  from  the  Berlin  Congress 
with  the  sense  that  her  interests  had  been  sacrificed  to 
those  of  Austria.  Bismarck  had  in  fact  made  it 
possible  for  Austria  to  organize  the  pacific  penetration 
of  a  region  that  ought  really  to  have  been  opened 
to  Italy :  "  Montenegro  must  come  to  terms  with 
Austria-Hungary  as  to  the  right  of  constructing  and 
maintaining  a  route  and  a  railway  across  the  new 
Montenegrin  territory"  (Clause  29  of  the  Treaty  of 
Berlin).  Count  Corti,  the  Italian  plenipotentiary,  took 
an  amusing  and  futile  revenge,  during  the  very  de- 
liberations of  the  Congress,  in  daily  allowing  the  more 
important  results  of  the  proceedings  to  leak  out  into  the 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     341 

columns  of  The  Times,  through  the  intermediary  of 
M.  de  Blowitz.  But  Crispi  was  already  meditating  a 
vengeance  of  a  finer  Italian  quality.  In  spite  of  his 
appeal  to  Bismarck,  Bosnia  had  been  given  to  Austria 
for  eventual  occupation,  and  Albania  had  not  been  given 
to  Italy,  nor  had  she  been  offered  any  other  territory 
on  the  Adriatic.  Pending  some  satisfactory  revenge 
Italy  took  provisionally  the  only  measure  that  could 
"  give  the  time  time."  II  tempo  e  galantuomo.  As  the 
best  practical  device  for  checking  Austrian  expansion 
in  the  Adriatic,  she  became  a  partner  to  the  Alliance 
between  Germany  and  Austria,  and  slowly  laid  her 
plans  to  extricate  herself  from  the  Germane-Austrian 
web. 

In  1890  Crispi  wrote  privately  to  Lord  Salisbury: 
"  If  we  had  Tripoli,  Bizerta  would  no  longer  be  a 
menace  for  Italy  nor  for  Great  Britain."  The  British 
Prime  Minister's  reply  was  not  unfavourable,  but  he 
conjured  his  Italian  colleague  to  wait.  Crispi,  as  a 
true  Italian,  could  not  ask  for  more  ;  but  a  year  later 
(January  1,  1891)  he  fell  from  office,  and  the  occupation 
of  Tripoli  was  adjourned  for  twenty  years.  This  letter, 
however,  was  the  origin  of  the  Mediterranean  arrange- 
ment with  England — soon  to  be  followed  up  by  the 
Franco-Italian  arrangements  of  1892,  which  were  to 
result  in  a  Mediterranean  Triple  Alliance  between 
England,  France  and  Italy,  an  alliance  which  was 
to  form  an  obstacle  in  the  future  to  many  a  belated 
German  scheme.  Algeciras  was  the  Nemesis  of  Ger- 
many. The  Germans  had  fancied  that  the  impetus 
given  to  their  foreign  policy  by  Bismarck  required  no 
watching.  They  had  counted  without  the  subtle  diplo- 
macy of  the  Consulta. 

The  general  result  of   that  diplomacy   had  been  to 


342  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

assure  to  Italy — not  in  spite,  but  because,  of  her  appar- 
ently conflicting  engagements  to  the  members  of  the 
two  reciprocally  hostile  European  groups — a  position 
of  independence  superior  to  that  of  any  of  the  European 
Powers,  not  excepting  England.  She  seemed  to  have 
allowed  herself  to  be  bound  fast.  Seen  from  afar  she 
looked  like  a  Laocoon  in  the  coils  of  the  two  monstrous 
serpents.  Yet  she  felt  herself  free  in  all  her  movements. 
She  was  less  free  than  she  fancied,  as  she  discovered 
when,  early  in  the  Italo-Turkish  War,  she  proceeded  to 
bombard  the  Albanian  coast,  in  order  to  bring  Turkey 
to  terms,  and  suddenly  found  herself  warned  off  the 
precincts  of  Valona  by  her  excellent  neighbour  and 
ally,  Austria-Hungary.  This  veto  rankled.  Obviously 
the  effects  of  the  Bismarckian  envoutement  of  Europe 
were  not  yet  wholly  spent.  Italy  decided  to  fight  out 
her  destiny  in  Africa,  and  meanwhile  subtly  contrived 
a  still  more  effective  vengeance  for  the  Treaty  of  Berlin. 
When  the  King  of  Montenegro,  father  to  the  Queen  of 
Italy,  and  himself  a  pensioner  of  that  Tsar  who  at 
Racconigi  signed  with  Victor  Emmanuel  a  treaty  con- 
cerning the  Balkans,  declared  war  against  Turkey, 
Signer  Giolitti  must  have  poured  libations  to  the  manes 
of  the  great  Crispi.  Italy  had  managed  to  obtain  a 
long-coveted  strip  of  the  North  African  coast-line,  and 
she  had  moreover  partially  contributed  to  the  creation  of 
a  situation  in  the  neighbouring  Balkans  which  would 
permit  her,  at  last,  to  challenge  her  relentless  rival,  and 
"  ally,"  Austria,  in  regions  from  which  both  Germany  and 
Austria  had  for  thirty  years  done  their  best  to  exclude 
her.  Face  to  face  with  a  potential  United  States  of 
Balkany,  Italy,  in  her  diplomatic  disputes  with  Austria, 
now  has  a  tangible  object  for  which  to  fight.  Austria, 
by  the  same  token — driven  back  westward,  and  con- 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     343 

fronted  with  a  problem  of  constructive  nationalism  which 
can  be  solved  only  to  the  diminution  of  the  prestige  of 
Germany — becomes  a  greater  menace  than  ever  to  Italy. 
Never  did  a  responsible  sovereign  give  a  more  certain 
proof  of  pacific  intention  than  William  II  when  he 
induced  his  allies  of  Rome  and  Vienna  to  renew,  while 
the  first  Balkan  War  wras  still  in  progress,  and  before 
the  fate  of  the  Eastern  Adriatic  was  settled,  the  pact 
of  the  Triple  Alliance.  By  what  device  Italy  managed 
to  maintain  her  independence,  while  still  renewing  this 
pact,  and  thus  rendered  a  service  not  only  to  peace, 
but  also  to  the  Powers  of  the  Triple  Entente,  has  already 
been  explained. 

Thus,  among  the  numerous  consequences  of  the 
Balkan  Wars  that  have  now  been  examined,  one  of  the 
most  significant  is  that  Italy  will  be  more  than  ever 
inclined  to  use  to  the  utmost  her  Mediterranean  Agree- 
ments with  France  and  England,  and  less  than  ever 
ready  to  further  the  growth  of  the  sea-power  of  her 
Triple  Alliance  partners  in  the  Mediterranean.  Speak- 
ing at  the  Farnese  Palace  on  New  Year's  Day,  1913, 
the  French  Ambassador,  M.  Barrere,  said : — 

"  Nothing  that  has  taken  place  in  Africa  has  been  able  to  alter  the 
sentiments  of  mutual  understanding  and  common  interest  that  inspired 
the  negotiation  of  the  Franco-Italian  Agreements  of  1900  and  1902. 
These  Agreements  subsist  with  undiminished  vigour;  their  object 
remains  intact.  They  have  given  France  and  Italy  twelve  years  of 
friendly  relations,  based  on  mutual  recognition  of  their  interests,  and 
so  firmly  established  that  we  can  take  it  as  certain  that  they  will  con- 
tinue to  develop  for  the  prosperity  and  grandeur  of  both  countries. 
Finally  these  Agreements  have  been  a  precious  guarantee  of  European 
equilibrium.  .  .  .  During  the  past  year  France  and  Italy  became,  by 
a  magnificent  effort  of  national  energy,  neighbours  hi  the  Dark 
Continent,  as  they  are  in  the  Alps  and  in  the  Mediterranean.  This 
fresh  contract  imposes  upon  the  two  Latin  nations  an  increase  of  con- 
fidence, friendly  intercourse  and  mutual  aid.  For  they  are  defending 


344  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

together  the  same  ideal  of  civilization,  and  their  moral  interest  in  this 
great  and  noble  task  is  identical" 

These  are  the  words  of  one  of  the  half-dozen  makers 
of  contemporary  Europe.  They  were  uttered  after  the 
renewal  of  the  Triple  Alliance.  Italy's  decision  to 
acquiesce  in  the  renewal  of  that  Alliance — on  condition 
that  its  purely  defensive  character  be  not  altered,  and 
that  it  should  not  be  extended  to  the  Mediterranean — 
is  clear  evidence  of  her  conviction  that  her  Mediter- 
ranean Agreements  with  France  and  England  have  been 
among  the  most  effective  guarantees  of  European  peace. 
Her  decision  suggests  also  that  now,  face  to  face  as  she 
is  with  Islamism,  and  with  a  concentrating  Austria,  she 
will  seek  to  supplement  these  Agreements  by  further 
arrangements  with  England  and  France,  tending  to 
establish  peace  for  a  generation  in  the  "Latin  Sea," 
and  on  the  North  African  coast-line.1  "If  we  had 

1  In  a  remarkable  speech  (February  23,  1913)  before  the  Italian 
Chamber,  the  Marquis  di  San  Giuliano,  Italian  minister  for  Foreign 
Affairs,  drew  an  elegant  distinction  between  balance  of  power  in  the 
Adriatic  and  balance  of  power  in  the  Mediterranean.  The  former 
problem,  he  said,  was  "  going  to  be  "  solved  by  "  the  intimate  collabora- 
tion of  Italy  and  Austria-Hungary,  the  co-operation  of  Germany,  and 
the  broad  and  pacific  spirit  of  equity  of  the  other  Great  Powers." 
Some  critics  concluded  that  the  phrase:  " co-operation  of  Germany" 
implied  Italian  acquiescence  in  Germany's  proposal  to  extend  the 
Triple  Alliance  to  the  Mediterranean.  The  reference  was  obviously  to 
Albania.  As  to  the  general  balance  of  power  in  the  Mediterranean  the 
Italian  minister  insisted  on  the  fact  that  that  sea  must  be  an  open 
highway  to  all  the  nations,  but  he  declared  that  the  Mediterranean 
Agreements  with  France  and  England  were  still  in  existence,  and  he 
avoided  any  fresh  reference  to  "  German  co-operation."  In  April 
1914  the  German  Foreign  Minister,  Herr  von  Jagow,  formally  denied 
the  alleged  conclusion  of  an  Agreement  between  the  Powers  of  the 
Triple  Alliance  concerning  the  Mediterranean.  In  the  same  month 
Count  Berchtold  had  an  interview  at  Abbazia  with  the  Italian  Minister 
for  Foreign  Affairs,  and  on  the  results  of  that  meeting  he  reported  as 
follows  to  the  Austrian  Delegations  :  "  The  pourparlers  that  took 


A  STUDY  OP  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     345 

Tripoli,  Bizerta  would  no  longer  be  a  menace  for  Italy 
nor  for  Great  Britain,"  said  Crispi  to  Salisbury.  But 
when  Crispi  wrote  these  words  France  and  England 
were  deadly  enemies.  In  1913  the  problem  of  British 
sea-power  has  become  a  function  of  an  even  larger 
problem,  that  of  the  maintenance  of  the  British  Empire. 
This  is  a  situation  which  Italy's  ambiguous  position,  as 
member  of  two  reciprocally  hostile  groups  of  Powers, 
renders  particularly  acute.  Kirk-Kilisse  has  tended  to 
turn  Italy  more  than  ever  towards  the  Powers  of  the 
Mediterranean ;  but  it  has  not  detached  her  from  the 
Triple  Alliance.  At  present  she  is  so  placed  as  to  be 
able  to  play  a  preponderant  role  in  the  counsels  of 
Europe.  It  is  significant  that  when,  on  the  death  of 
Kiderlen  Waechter,  William  II  had  to  choose  a  secre- 
tary of  state  for  foreign  affairs,  his  choice  fell  on  the 

place  on  this  occasion  confirmed  my  opinion  that  the  changes  that 
have  taken  place  in  the  East  will  serve  as  a  basis  for  a  fresh  com- 
munity of  interests  between  the  two  allied  Powers.  .  .  .  The  results 
of  this  tendency,  both  as  regards  the  maintenance  of  European  peace 
and  as  to  securing  an  open  Adriatic  and  the  balance  of  power  in  that 
sea,  have  been  taken  at  their  full  value  by  the  entire  population  of 
Hungary  and  Italy."  These  declarations  of  the  Austro-Hungarian 
and  the  Italian  Foreign  Ministers  justify  the  above  interpretation  of 
the  speech  of  the  Marquis  di  San  Giuliano.  In  this  connexion  it  is 
interesting  to  .note  that  on  May  29,  1914,  M.  Barrere  and  the  Marquis 
di  San  Giuliano  signed  an  Agreement  determining  the  status  of 
Tripolitans  in  Tunis  and  of  Tunisians  in  Tripoli,  thus  settling  to  the 
satisfaction  of  France  and  Italy  a  series  of  delicate  and  thorny 
questions  which  threatened  to  sunder  the  two  Powers.  This  Agree- 
ment was  the  corollary  of  that  of  1902,  the  significance  of  which  was 
excellently  defined  by  M.  Barrere  in  the  New  Year's  Day  speech  above 
cited.  Finally,  it  should  not  be  overlooked  that  when,  in  June  1914, 
just  before  the  murder  of  the  Austrian  Heir-Apparent,  the  German 
Emperor,  accompanied  by  Admiral  von  Tirpitz,  met  the  Archduke 
Francis  Ferdinand  at  Konopischt,  the  latter,  in  turn,  being  accompanied 
by  the  head  of  the  Austrian  Navy,  Admiral  Haus,  no  representative 
of  the  Italian  Navy  was  present. 


346  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

German  Ambassador  in  Rome.  And  it  should  now  at 
last  be  clear  why  the  settlement  of  the  questions  sud- 
denly forced  upon  the  attention  of  the  members  of  the 
Triple  Entente,  by  the  turn  taken  by  the  Turco-ltalian 
War,  by  the  success  of  the  Balkan  League,  and  by  the 
consequences  of  the  Inter-Balkan  War,  is  to  be  the 
supreme  test  of  the  solidity  of  that  pact. 

The  destruction  of  Turkey,  the  disintegration  of 
Islamism,  is  the  downfall  of  a  moss-grown,  but  singu- 
larly venerable  and  solid,  portion  of  the  rampart  of 
world-peace.  For  England  and  for  France  it  seemed  to 
be  the  disappearance  of  a  necessary  barrier  to  the  ex- 
pansion of  the  rival  Powers,  first  Austria,  then  Ger- 
many, into  the  rich  regions  of  the  Middle  East.  During 
centuries  the  "  integrity  of  the  Ottoman  Empire"  was, 
for  the  old-time  diplomacy,  one  of  the  cardinal  points 
of  its  compass,  a  categorical  imperative,  as  it  were,  of 
diplomatic  dogma.  It  was  held  that  the  prestige  and 
the  security  of  France  and  England  demanded  the 
maintenance  of  an  intact  Islamism.  The  liquidation  of 
Islamism,  begun  by  the  French  in  Algiers,  Tunis  and 
Morocco,  pursued  by  the  British  in  Egypt,  and  now  by 
the  Italians  in  Tripoli,  is  rapidly  being  consummated  by 
the  financial  and  industrial  expropriation  of  the  Otto- 
man Empire  in  Asia.  Over  the  giant  blocks  of  the 
fallen  rampart  the  Pan-German,  the  Pan-Slav,  the 
Anglo-Saxon,  and  the  Latin,  tide  is  now  streaming  in 
a  relentless  flood.  The  only  resource  of  France  and 
England — as  partners  of  the  one  dread  and  mysterious 
Power  that  has  always  desired  the  destruction  of  Turkey 
— is  to  favour  the  consolidation  of  the  Slav  States  of 
the  Balkans,  and  to  further,  against  Pan-Germanism, 
the  steady  development  of  Russia.  An  impregnable 
Pan-Slav  world  alone  can  now  act  as  a  counterpoise 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     347 

to  the  growing  might  of  the  German  Empire  in  regions 
remote  from  the  zones  of  attraction  of  England  and 
France.  An  impregnable  Pan-Slav  world  alone  can,  in 
the  Middle  East,  by  its  very  existence,  and  by  its 
potential  momentum,  permit  the  two  Powers  of  Western 
Europe  to  work  out  their  common,  as  well  as  their 
individual,  destiny  in  peace.  Such  stable  equilibrium 
as  the  interests  of  civilization  demand  seems  attainable 
to-day  only  by  the  preservation  of  the  group  of  World- 
Powers  known  as  the  Triple  Entente. 


VI 

Meanwhile,  the  three  Powers  must  act  together  in  the 
Far  East.  This  is  the  second  theatre  of  the  concerted 
activity  of  the  Triple  Entente.  Three  special  arrange- 
ments already  fix  the  conditions  in  which  that  Entente 
is  to  work  out  its  programme  in  that  vast  region. 
There  is  the  Anglo-Russian  Entente,  there  is  the  Anglo- 
Japanese  Alliance,  and  there  is  the  latest  Russo- 
Japanese  Agreement.  These  three  pacts  were  formed, 
have  been  occasionally  modified,  and  will  continue  to 
be  respected,  with  the  object  of  maintaining  peace  in 
Persia,  China,  and  Far  Eastern  waters.  Eight  years 
after  the  battles  of  Manchuria,  Russia  and  Japan,  with 
a  practical  sense  that  should  make  a  Bismarck  turn  in 
his  grave,  are  coming  to  terms  for  the  common  economic 
domination  of  China,  and  it  is  within  England's  power 
to  share  this  hegemony  and  eventually  convert  it  into 
political  predominance.  France,  the  ally  of  Russia,  and 
England,  the  ally  of  Japan,  have  their  parts  cut  out  for 
them  :  it  is  nothing  less  than  vigilantly  to  prevent  the 
Russo-Japanese  understanding  from  becoming  an  instru- 
ment for  the  destruction  of  China.  Gen.  Homer  Lea 


348  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

has  pointed  out  (ch.  vii,  The  Day  of  the  Saxon)  the  vital 
necessity  for  England  both   to  thwart  the  naval  ex- 
pansion  of  Japan  in   the  Pacific,  and  to  defend  the 
integrity  of  China.     The  maintenance  of  the  political 
and  military  equilibrium  of  the  Pacific  is,  indeed,  one  of 
England's  first  Imperial  duties  :  hence  the  predominant 
part  played  by  India  in  British  Imperial  strategy.    The 
natural  alliance  was  between  England  and  China,  not 
between  England  and  Japan.     But  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  balance  of  power  in  the   Pacific,  France, 
sovereign   in   Indo-China,    has    the   same   interests    as 
England.     The   partners   to   the   Dual   Entente   ought 
to  co-operate,  therefore,  in  the  establishment  of  good 
government  in  China,  and  prevent  any  Russo-Japanese 
arrangement  from  hampering  their  common  action.     It 
should  not,   however,  be   a  cause  of  regret    to  either 
Power  if  Russo-Japanese  co-operation  in  Northern  China 
diverts  Japanese  ambition  from  the  Pacific  towards  the 
Continent,  and  Russian  expansion  from  India  to  North- 
Eastern  China.     As  Gen.  Lea  has  said  :  "  Should  Japan, 
to    extend   her    sovereignty   on   the   Asian   continent, 
neglect  to  first  gain  control  of  the  Pacific,  then  the 
duration  of  her  national  greatness  will  draw  to  an  end." 
Russia  and  Japan,  it  will  be  remembered,  celebrated  the 
fourth  of  July  (American  Independence  Day),  1910,  by 
declaring    that    if    the    Manchurian    status    quo   were 
menaced,    "  they    would    come    to    terms    as    to    the 
measures  they  might  deem  necessary  to  take  for  the 
maintenance  of  the  said  status  quo."     This  was  an  apt 
and   timely  retort  to   the   sensational   and   ill-advised 
proposals    of    Mr.    Taft's    Government   for   the   inter- 
nationalizing of  the  Manchurian  railways.     It  was  an 
amusing  instance  of  Monroism  in  Asiatic  waters.     Since 
then  the  sphere  of  Chinese  territory  over  which   the 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     349 

Russians  and  the  Japanese  have  publicly  extended  their 
prohibitive  sway  has.  been  made  to  include  Mongolia,1 
and  the  two  Powers  are  already  prospecting  these  new 
spheres  for  the  construction  of  railways.  England,  who 
helped  Japan  to  secure  her  foothold  in  Corea,  cannot  be 
surprised  at  what  has  happened,  and  the  United  States 
has  even  less  cause  to  wonder,  even  though  Russo- 
Japanese  co-operation  in  Asia  probably  implies  the 
shattering  of  the  Germano-American  principle  of  the 
"open  door."2  Great  Britain,  in  revising,  in  July 
1911,  her  treaty  of  Alliance  with  Japan,  took  the  first 
step  towards  the  realization  of  what  should  be  her  chief 
aim,  the  fusing  of  the  British  Empire ;  but,  in  so  doing, 
she  virtually  left  Japan  in  the  lurch.  To  please  the 
President  of  the  United  States,  to  appease  the  Prime 
Ministers  of  the  Dominions,  and  to  avoid  entanglements 

1  By  the  Russo-Mongolian  Agreement  of  October  21,  1912,  Russia 
is  to  "  lend  Mongolia  support  in  the  maintenance  of  the  autonomous 
regime  established  by  the  latter."    In  return  the  Regent  of  Mongolia 
concedes  to  Russian  subjects  and  to  Russian  trade  the  enjoyment  of 
special  rights  and  privileges.     The  Mongolian  Government  is  not  to 
conclude  any  agreement  with  China  or  any  other  Power  "  traversing 
or  modifying  the  Treaty  with  Russia  "  without  the   assent  of  the 
Imperial  Russian  Government.     We  shall  shortly,  no  doubt,  learn  the 
Japanese  counterpart  of  this  Treaty. 

2  Yet  both  the  Treaty  of  Portsmouth  (September  5,  1906)  and  the 
second  and  third  Anglo- Japanese  Treaties  of  Alliance  (August  12, 1905, 
and  July   13,   1911)   admitted  the   principle   of    the   Open   Door  in 
Manchuria.     Clause  4  of  the  Russo-Japanese  Treaty  agreed  "  not  to 
oppose  the  general  measures  common  to  all  the  Powers  which  China 
might  take  for  the  development  of  the  trade  and  industry  of  Man- 
churia " ;  and  the  Anglo-Japanese  treaties,  going  further,  stated  it  to 
be  the  object  of  those  agreements  "  to  preserve  the  common  interests 
of  all  Powers  in  China  by  ensuring  the  independence  and  integrity  of 
the  Chinese  Empire,  and  the  principle  of  equal  opportunities  for  the 
commerce  and  industry  of  all  nations  in  China."     It  is  in  consequence 
of  the  action  of  just  such  protestations  as  these  in  favour  of  the 
"  integrity  of  the  Ottoman  Empire,"  that  Turkey  has  been  crumbling 
and  will  continue  to  crumble. 


350  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

in  connexion  with  the  opening  of  the  Panama  Canal, 
she  insisted  on  emasculating  her  agreement  with  Japan, 
and  partially  left  her  old  ally  to  shift  for  herself  in  her 
home  waters.1  Happily,  the  Russo-Japanese  War  was 
concluded  without  leaving  behind  it  an  Asiatic  Alsace- 
Lorraine.  One  Treaty  of  Frankfort  is  enough  for  one 
century.  The  former  enemies  rushed  into  each  other's 

1  That  was  the  upshot — on  paper  ! — and  probably  the  intention,  of 
the  revised  treaty  of  July  13,  1911.  England  accepted  the  clause 
obliging  both  Powers  to  come  to  each  other's  rescue  should  they  be 
the  object  of  an  unprovoked  attack — under  the  Alliance  with  Japan 
England,  as  Mr.  Churchill  pointed  out  on  March  17,  1914,  in  a  speech 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  is  "  bound  to  maintain  in  the  China  Sea  a 
force  superior  to  any  other  European  Power,"  and  this  arrangement 
will  subsist,  at  all  events,  until  1921 — but  it  inserted  in  the  new  treaty 
a  fresh  clause  providing  that  if  "  either  Contracting  Party  concluded 
a  treaty  of  general  arbitration  with  a  third  Power,  nothing  in  the 
Agreement  should  entail  upon  such  Contracting  Party  an  obligation 
to  go  to  war  with  the  Power  with  whom  such  treaty  of  arbitration  was 
in  force."  This  fresh  clause  was  a  concession  to  Canada,  Australia, 
New  Zealand  and  the  United  States.  But  it  is  one  of  the  ironies  of 
history  that  the  Taft  project  of  unrestricted  arbitration,  signed  by 
England  and  the  United  States,  was  not  ratified  by  the  American 
Senate.  England,  like  the  dog  in  the  fable,  sacrificed  the  bone  for  the 
shadow ;  and  the  result  was  that  Japan,  herself  on  the  point  of  being 
partly  left  in  the  lurch,  turned  towards  Russia  for  moral  and  material 
support  against  the  Powers  aiming  at  the  hegemony  of  the  Pacific. 
By  the  failure  of  the  Arbitration  scheme,  moreover,  England  slipped, 
as  it  were,  between  two  stools.  She  lost  Japanese  goodwill,  and  she 
did  not  obtain  that  of  the  United  States.  England  is  now,  in  spite  of 
the  revision  of  the  Japanese  treaty,  exactly  where  she  was  before  its 
revision,  as  regards  her  obligations  towards  Japan  in  case  of  war.  In 
a  word,  Mr.  Roosevelt  and  Mr.  Henry  Cabot  Lodge,  by  their  violent 
hostility  to  Mr.  Taft's  Arbitration  Treaty,  knocked  the  bottom  out  of 
the  British  plan  to  render  a  friendly  service  to  the  United  States,  while 
satisfying  the  insistent  claims  of  the  Dominion.  As  things  are  now, 
therefore,  England  would  have  to  defend  Japan  by  arms  if  Japan  were 
attacked,  say,  by  the  United  States.  The  predicament  of  the  Dominions 
would  then  be  a  peculiar  one.  Happily,  the  new  Japanese  arrange- 
ments with  Russia  are  likely  to  render  less  probable  an  eventual  shock 
between  Japan  and  the  United  States  in  the  Pacific. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     351 

arms.     The  consequence  is  simple  but  prodigious.     The 
bugaboo  of  the  Yellow  Peril  will  be  definitely  laid  by 
Russo-Japanese  co-operation.    No  result  could  be  either 
more  desirable  or  more  logical ;  none  could  be  more 
convenient  for  Great  Britain  and  for  France,  nor,  it 
should  be  added,  for  the  United  States,  whose  attention 
for  some  time  to  come  must  be  steadily  concentrated 
north  and  south  of  Colon  and  Panama.     The  appre- 
hensions of  the  Powers,  lest  with  the  "break-up"  of 
China  the  whole  race  should  be  submerged  by  a  muddy 
and  mounting  tide  of  yellow  men,  are  being  conjured 
away.     China   is   not   breaking    up ;    China    is    being 
organized.     The  trade,  the  industry,  and  the  finance  of 
the  world,  American  and  German  and  British  business 
enterprise,  and  American,  French  and  British  money, 
are  shortly  to  render  Chinamen  so  busy  at  home,  under 
the  surveillance  of  Japan  and  the  Triple  Entente,  that 
many  of  the  now  urgent  problems  of  immigration  which 
are    disturbing    the    nights    of    American,    Canadian, 
Mexican,  Chilian,  and  Australian  statesmen  will,  tem- 
porarily at  all  events,  be  shelved.1     And  for  the  United 
States,  above  all,  it  is  an  event  of  the  happiest  omen 
that,  just  on  the  eve  of  the  opening  of  the  Panama 
Canal,  Japan  should  seem  to  be  turning  her  main  atten- 
tion to  the  problem  of  co-operation  with  Russia  to  do 
the  world's  work  in  those  regions  of  the  Pacific  where 
her  share  of  the  white  man's  burden  is  and  where  her 
responsibilities  seem  to  lie.     She  needs  no  naval  base  on 
the  other  side  of  the  Pacific,  at  Magdalona  Bay  or  else- 
where, to  complete  the  marvellous  epic  of  her  rise  to  the 
rank  of  a  Great  Power  by  achievements  as  glorious  as 
those  that  marked  even  the  miraculous  reign  of  Mitsu- 

1  The   Japonization   of   China   has   been   remarkably   treated   by 
M.  Rene  Pinon  in  La  lutte  pour  le  Pacifique,  pp.  97-152. 


352 

Hito.  For  the  moment  she  has  enough  to  do  at  home. 
The  new  era  of  Taisho  is  to  test  her  national  character 
as  it  was  never  tested  even  in  the  era  of  Meiji.  Japan 
has  had  to  pay  dear  for  the  luxury  and  honour  of 
becoming  a  World-Power.  Six  months  after  the  close 
of  the  war  her  public  debt  amounted  to  1,850,000,000 
yen,  and  her  taxes  were  5*27  yen  per  inhabitant.  Five 
years  later,  March  31,  1911,  the  debt  was  2,650,000,000, 
while  the  taxes  were  6'2  yen  per  inhabitant.  Thus 
the  taxes,  the  majority  of  which  are  still  the  taxes  im- 
posed because  of  a  great  war,  remain  virtually  unaltered 
and  must  be  revised.  The  burden  of  taxation  borne  by 
the  Japanese  citizen  is  twice  that  weighing  on  the 
shoulders  of  Frenchmen  or  Englishmen.  A  policy  of 
retrenchment  and  reform  is  absolutely  necessary.  Al- 
ready a  Japanese  minister  of  finance,  Mr.  Yamamoto, 
introducing  into  the  State  administration  the  principle 
of  festina  lente,  has  succeeded  in  curtailing  the  ambi- 
tions of  his  colleagues  of  the  departments  of  public 
works,  of  the  army  and  of  the  navy,  while  promising 
the  Japanese  people  to  lighten  their  burdens  in  the  next 
budget.  The  circumstances  attending  the  resignation 
of  the  Japanese  Cabinet  early  in  December  1912,  owing 
to  the  deadlock  between  the  civil  and  the  military 
elements,  and  the  Tokyo  riots  of  February  1913,  as 
well  as  the  subsequent  fall  of  the  Katsura  and  the 
Yamamoto  Ministries,  showed  the  immense,  change  that 
has  come  over  Japan  in  the  last  ten  years  as  regards 
the  growth  of  a  public  opinion  hostile  to  Imperialism 
and  in  favour  of  retrenchment.  This  is  a  state  of 
things  that  should  not  be  overlooked  in  attempting  to 
plot  the  curve  of  Japanese-American  relations  in  the 
Pacific.  Japan  must  remain  busy  at  home  or  within 
the  immediate  precincts  of  her  own  home- waters.  Five 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     353 

years  at  least  of  peace  and  a  rigorously  prudent 
financial  and  fiscal  policy,  while  she  is  engaged  in  the 
experiment  of  establishing  party  government,  will  be 
required  to  place  her  in  a  position  permitting  her  to 
contemplate  the  future  without  dismay.  Already  she 
has  had  to  borrow  money  abroad  to  pay  the  interest  on 
loans  previously  contracted.  An  immense  specie  reserve 
of  Japan's  money  is  thus  immobilized  in  England. 
Additional  foreign  loans  will  still  be  necessary. 

In  general,  it  may  be  said  that  the  first  quarter  of 
the  twentieth  century  will  probably  be  marked  in  world 
chronicles  as  that  in  which  the  hinterland  of  the  eastern 
shores  of  Asia  was  rapidly  laid  open  to  the  play  of 
economic  and  financial  forces.  In  order  that  this  evolution 
may  proceed  in  peace,  Russia  and  Japan  must  be  suffered 
to  police  those  waters  with  the  military  and  financial 
co-operation  of  their  friends  and  allies.     This  operation, 
which  will  be  made  immeasurably  easier  by  the  opening 
of  the  Panama  Canal,  will  take  place  far  more  rapidly 
than  is  generally  suspected,  and  before,  from  the  Caspian 
across  Siberia  to  the  sea  of  Okhotsk,  and  from  Teheran 
to  the  Yellow  Sea,  the  colossal  interior  of  the  Asiatic 
triangle,  the  apex  of  which  is  notched  by  the  indenta- 
tions of  Cadiz,  Brest,  London  and  Marseilles,  will  be 
criss-crossed  with  railways  built   by  Western  capital, 
that  will  discipline  in  civilizing  ways  a  population  ready 
to  take  its  part  in  the  task  of  world  organization.     It 
seems  hard  to  believe  that  certain  Englishmen,  deaf  to 
the  appeal  of  observers  like  Sir  Valentine  Chirol,  are  still 
hesitating  to  take  into  friendly  consideration  the  pro- 
posal for  the  construction  of  a  Trans-Persian  railway : 
a  railway  that  is  certain  to  be  built ;  that,  if  built  by 
Russia,   France  and   England,  will  solidify  the  Triple 
Entente ;  that  will  "  help  to  restore  the  economic  pros- 

AA 


354  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

peritj  of  Persia,"  "strengthen  the  central  authority  and 
pacify  the  turbulent  regions  through  which  it  will  pass ' ' ; 
and,  finally,  will  render  India  an  accessibly  tangible 
portion  of  the  British  Empire  and  insert  a  prosperous 
buffer-State  between  Russia  and  England.  While  these 
hesitations  are  being  prolonged,  the  Russian  Govern- 
ment has  launched  out  on  a  vast  scheme  of  public 
works  that  are  to  transform  its  Asiatic  possessions. 
Russia  is  building,  or  is  about  to  build,  feelers  to  its 
great  railway  across  Siberia ;  another  railway  from  the 
shores  of  the  Caspian  by  way  of  Merv  and  Bokhara,  along 
the  frontier  of  Afghanistan  to  Samarkand ;  still  another 
linking  the  Volga  to  the  Sea  of  Aral ;  and  another  open- 
ing up  Turkestan  as  far  as  Tashkent.  These  projects 
are  but  a  few  items  in  the  vast  programme  which  the 
solid  co-operation  of  the  Triple  Entente  with  Japan  may 
carry  out  in  the  interests  of  the  economic  improvement 
of  Asia,  and  of  the  peace  of  the  world  during  the  next 
twenty  years.  The  detached  critic  of  world-movements 
may  apply  to  this  whole  series  of  schemes  the  words 
applied  by  The  Times  to  the  project  of  the  Trans-Iranian : 
"  We  only  hope  that  when  the  moment  comes  for  sifting 
them  they  will  be  judged  with  greater  foresight  than  was 
shown  by  British  Governments  in  the  case  of  the  Suez 
Canal ;  for  fortune  may  not  again  enable  us  to  redeem  the 
folly  of  narrow  views" 


VII 

But  the  era  of  "  narrow  views  "  is  past.  Mankind  is 
living  amid  a  contagion  of  adventure.  The  moment 
is  at  hand  when  the  dream  of  Columbus,  of  ultimately 
reaching  India  if  he  sailed  steadily  into  the  West,  is  on 
the  point  of  fulfilment.  The  nations  are  already  rushing 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     355 

into  the  vortex  of  the  Caribbean.  The  Panama  Canal 
will  be  open  in  1914.  On  the  other  side  of  the  world, 
the  Japanese,  two  years  ahead  of  time,  have  already 
completed  the  trans-Corean  railway  linking  the  Russian 
station  of  Kharbine  to  the  landing-stage  at  Fousan,  and 
have  signed  a  contract  with  the  "  French  Sleeping  Car 
Company"  for  the  organization  of  a  direct  bi-weekly 
service  between  Paris  and  Tokyo.  Even  a  "  little 
Englander"  will  reflect  before  really  trying  to  wreck 
the  Trans-Iranian. 

The  Powers  are  rushing  into  the  Caribbean,  and  only 
Poseidon,  the  Earth-Shaker,  who  in  August  1912  altered 
the  shore-line  of  the  Dardanelles,  and  who  has  a  revenge 
to  take  for  Nicaragua,  can  now  stem  the  tide.  The 
Caribbean,  it  has  been  noted,  is  the  third  field  of  activity 
for  the  Triple  Entente.  In  reality,  in  considering  the 
Triple  Entente,  the  common  interests  of  France  and 
England  alone  need  be  dealt  with,  with  regard  to  the 
opening  of  the  Panama  Canal.  Russia  may  be  left  out 
of  account  until  she  has  realized  her  project  of  bridging 
Behring's  Sea.  But  in  the  American  Mediterranean, 
between  Venezuela  and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  France  and 
England  are  confronted  with  quite  another  set  of  con- 
ditions ;  they  are  face  to  face  with  a  new  Power.  Here 
they  have  to  deal  no  longer  with  the  members  of  the 
Triple  Entente  alone,  but  with  a  great  State  which  had 
hitherto  made  it  a  point  of  honour  to  be  able  to  get  on 
alone,  independently  of  an  "effete  Europe,"  and  has 
ridiculed  almost  as  roundly  as  England  herself  (it  is 
in  the  blood)  the  possible  advantages  of  "  entangling 
alliances."  There  is  evidence  that  the  United  States  is 
not  even  yet  aware  of  the  changes  in  store  for  it  in  con- 
sequence of  the  unconcerted,  but  common  and  glorious, 
achievement  of  M.  Philippe  Bunau-Varilla  and  Mr. 


356  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

Roosevelt :  the  Revolution  of  Panama  and  the  comple- 
tion of  the  Canal.  It  is  probable  that  the  Americans, 
absorbed,  as  Rear-Admiral  Mahan  puts  it,  in  their 
"national  ignorant  self -sufficiency,"  preoccupied  by  the 
pressing  problem  of  organizing  democracy  on  the  vastest 
scale  on  which  that  operation  has  ever  been  attempted, 
engaged  in  the  gigantic  task  of  constructive  nationalism 
to  which  they  have  been  impelled  by  the  energy  and 
intelligence  of  Mr.  Roosevelt,  may  not  yet  be  alive  to 
all  the  consequences  of  their  Martian  enterprise.  But 
their  national  self-defence  is  a  matter  of  constructive 
nationalism,  and  in  view  of  the  rapid  march  of  time  it 
is  perhaps  the  main  matter  with  which  they  have  now 
to  deal. 

During  the  ten  years  following  on  the  Spanish- 
American  War,  the  American  Government  pursued  but 
half -consciously  the  policy  of  introducing  her  voice  into 
the  counsels  of  Europe  and  the  world.  The  imperialism 
of  her  drift,  though  it  escaped  the  notice  of  the  average 
American  citizen,  was  clearly  perceived  by  the  outside 
world,  and  it  has  already  been  shown  that  this  fact,  and 
this  alone,  gave  Mr.  Roosevelt  his  prestige  in  Europe. 
While  holding — somewhat  arrogantly — to  a  vague  and 
intangible  principle  known  as  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  the 
United  States  meddled  in  matters  which  it  might  have 
been  thought  logical,  but  which  it  was  practically  impos- 
sible, for  it  to  ignore.  The  United  States  had  not  inter- 
vened in  the  Chino- Japanese  war  of  1894-1895.  In 
1897,  as  is  recalled  by  M.  Rene  Pinon  in  his  Lutte  pour 
le  Pacifique,  Mr.  Sherman,  the  Secretary  of  State,  declared 
to  a  French  diplomatist  that  the  United  States  "  had 
not  a  cent's  worth  of  trade  with  China,  and  would  never 
send  a  soldier  there."  Yet  in  1900  the  United  States 
took  part  in  the  Peking  Expedition.  W  hat  had  happened 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     357 

was  that  a  protective  tariff  had  made  the  exportation 
of  cotton  goods  from  Massachusetts  into  Manchuria  a 
desirable  object  of  American  activity,  and  a  sufficient 
pretext  for  the  American  claim  to  the  maintenance  of 
an  "  Open  Door  "  in  Eastern  Asia,  at  the  very  moment 
that  the  United  States  was  establishing  itself  in  the 
Philippines.  Every  day,  in  fact,  revealed  the  funda- 
mental antinomy  between  the  principle  of  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  and,  not  merely  certain  of  the  moral  and  intel- 
lectual and  economic  forces  of  the  modern  world,  but 
the  consensus  of  opinion,  philosophic  and  juristic,  which 
the  pressure  of  those  forces  was  causing  to  be  codified  in 
international  law.  At  the  same  time,  there  was  revealed 
to  the  United  States  the  necessity  of  possessing  the  fleet 
of  its  policy,  the  arm  that  could  permit  it  the  luxury  of 
a  Monroe  Doctrine.  It  made  frantic,  characteristic, 
even  sincere  efforts,  to  stick  to  the  logic  of  its  Doctrine 
without  a  fleet.  Whatever  happened  it  would  hold  to 
its  inexperienced  American  idealism.  In  1902  it  handed 
over  the  administration  of  Cuba  to  its  own  people.  In 
1909,  after  having  governed  the  island  for  three  years 
in  order  to  stave  off  civil  war,  it  shirked  a  second  time 
the  duty  of  facing  plain  political  facts.  A  lack  of  intel- 
lectual probity  is  often  characteristic  of  Anglo-Saxon 
statesmanship,1  and  of  late  years,  in  America,  Mr. 
Roosevelt  alone  would  seem  to  have  had  an  inkling  of 
the  profound  practical  truth  of  Spinoza's  remark :  "  It 
matters  little,  as  regards  the  security  of  the  State,  what 
the  motives  of  rulers  may  be  in  the  successful  adminis- 
tration of  affairs.  Liberty  or  strength  of  soul  are  the 
virtue  of  private  persons ;  the  virtue  of  the  State  is 
security."  Yet  the  United  States  continued  to  hold  the 
Philippines  and  Hawaii,  and  to  insist  on  an  Open  Door 
1  See  note  1,  p.  362,  and  note  2,  p.  219. 


358  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

in  China.  In  spite  of  itself,  it  became  a  positive  factor 
in  the  manoeuvres  by  which  the  Powers  sought  to  parcel 
out  the  whole  of  Eastern  Asia,  until  they  were  reminded 
that  that  region  was  a  sphere  of  influence  of  Russia  and 
Japan.  At  Algeciras,  meanwhile,  the  United  States — 
again  owing  to  the  quick  resolution  and  the  diplomatic 
sense  and  knowledge  of  Mr.  Roosevelt — had  shown  that 
it  was  on  occasion  one  of  the  essential  factors  of  inter- 
national peace. 

But  all  these  instances  of  American  co-operation  in 
the  international  political  work  of  the  world  have  some- 
what lacked  continuity.  At  all  events  they  have  not 
possessed  an  adequate  sanction.  Their  unco-ordinated, 
often  illogical  character,  will  be  revealed  to  the  most 
indifferent  once  the  Panama  Canal  is  opened.  The 
United  States  must  henceforth  have  a  consistent  world- 
policy  supported  on  a  fleet  adequate  to  protect  its  inter- 
ests in  the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific.  It  has  summoned 
the  world  to  its  doors.  It  must  henceforth  not  only 
defend  the  precincts  of  its  house,  but  be  able  to  justify 
its  action  with  pretexts  acceptable  to  its  competitors 
and  enemies. 

The  preliminary  efforts  of  the  United  States  to  attain 
this  end  have  thus  far  neither  been  adequate  nor  suffi- 
ciently intelligible  and  explicit.  This  point  requires 
explanation. 

American  coast-wise  trade  is  an  American  monopoly. 
Now,  as,  practically  speaking,  the  Canal  has  become — 
in  Rear- Admiral  Mahan's  view,  and  as  was  held  by  Pres- 
ident Hayes — a  part  of  the  coast-line  of  the  United 
States,  it  is  argued  that  such  trade  may  be  allowed  by 
the  United  States  to  use  the  Panama  Canal  under  any 
terms  that  the  Government  may  see  fit  to  propose. 
Being  a  part  of  the  American  coast-line  the  Canal  should 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     359 

be  fortified,  and  for  like  reasons  should  be  connected 
with  the  Cuban  naval  base  of  Guantanamo.  The  de- 
fence of  the  United  States  is  what  the  mathematicians 
call  "  a  function  "  ot  the  problem  of  control  of  the  Canal, 
and  no  parallel  case  exists  in  the  world. 

Lord  Lansdowne's  queries  with  regard  to  the  Dar- 
danelles have,  however,  raised  certain  points  or  sugges- 
tions that  may  be  cited  as  militating  against  this  view.1 
Every  one  can  see  the  peculiar  advantage,  for  the  United 
States,  in  case  of  war,  of  possessing,  between  the  Atlantic 
and  the  Pacific,  a  safe  open  highway  which  it  is  at 
liberty  to  fortify  as  part  of  its  coast-line.  But  once  the 
currents  of  traffic  have  begun  to  flow  through  the  Canal, 
it  is  possible,  it  is  indeed  probable,  that  the  South 
American  States  of  the  Pacific,  and  even  Australia,  will 
be  even  more  benefited  than  the  United  States  by  the 
use  of  the  Canal ;  and  at  such  a  moment,  which  will  not 
be  long  deferred,  the  great  States  that  are  international 
carriers,  England,  Germany,  France,  even  Japan,  would 
find  their  interests  seriously  affected  by  the  closing  of 
the  Canal.  The  question  of  the  neutralization  of  the 
Canal  might  then  conceivably  be  made  the  object  of  a 
common  protest,  and  if  the  United  States  refused  to 
heed  such  a  protest,  the  Powers  would  have  only  the 
redress  of  the  Hague  Arbitration  Tribunal  (should  the 
United  States  consent  to  bring  the  matter  before  such  a 
Tribunal)  or  war.  If  a  case  of  this  kind  were  brought 
to-day  before  any  Court  of  International  Law,  there  can 
be  little  doubt  as  to  the  verdict  of  such  a  Court.  In 
a  "  Consultation  "  made  in  the  name  of  the  protest- 
ing Powers,  whose  "  nationals  "  (certain  foreign  life-in- 
surance companies  established  in  Italy)  are  threatened 

1  See  p. 9 


360  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

with  confiscation  by  the  Italian  Government,1  which 
desires  to  establish  a  state  monopoly  of  life-insurance, 
Maitre  Edward  Clunet  has  martialled  the  arguments 
now  universally  adduced  by  international  jurists  to  prove 
that  the  right  of  a  State  to  legislate  in  sovereign  inde- 
pendence is  limited  by  the  right  of  other  States  to  see 

1  See  p.  230.  In  May  1914  Senor  Guglielruo  Ferrero  confirmed 
this  point  of  view  in  an  article  in  the  Secolo  of  Milan.  The  most 
important  passage  of  this  article  was  translated  as  follows  by  the 
Temps :  "  Quelle  surprise,  dit-il,  quand  chacun  lut,  a  tete  reposee  et 
avec  calme,  le  texte  de  ce  projet  de  loi  1  II  faut  avoir  la  franchise  de 
dire  &  haute  voix,  puisque  nous  faisons  notre  exainen  de  conscience,  ce 
que  bien  des  gens  dirent  alors  ft  voix  basse,  a  savoir  que  cette  loi,  telie 
qu'elle  fut  proposed  &  1'origine,  etait  une  loi  violente  de  confiscation. 
Je  ne  veux  pas  discuter  ici  les  raisons  de  haut  interet  public  par 
lesquelles  on  tenta  de  juatifier  une  aussi  grave  perturbation  de  1'ordre 
juridique  que  les  lois  garantissent  a  toutes  les  industries  et  a  tous  les 
commerces.  Je  ne  rechercherai  done  pas  s'il  est  vrai,  comme  on 
I'amrmait,  que  le  moyen  propose  etait  le  seul  propre  &  rendre  1'Etat 
moins  tributaire  des  grands  potentats  de  la  finance.  Alors  meme  que 
1'avenir  devrait  deniontrer  la  v^rite  de  cette  assertion,  Thistorien  ne 
peut  pas  negliger  d'observer  qu'au  moment  ou  le  projet  de  loi  fut 
depose',  cet  interet  sup^rieur  qu'il  devait  soutenir  apparaissait  bien 
eloigne,  tandis  que  la  perturbation  qu'il  allait  entrainer  e"tait  profonde 
et  imminente.  D'un  trait  de  plume,  cette  loi  allait  detruire  une 
Industrie  florissante  et  qui  s'etait  developpee  par  ses  propres  moyens 
&  1'ombre  du  droit  commun ;  cette  loi  refusait  toute  indemnity  a  ceux 
qui  vivaient  de  cette  Industrie  ;  elle  ne  tenait  compte  ni  des  capitaux 
ni  du  travail  depens^s  pour  la  faire  prosperer ;  elle  jetait  dans 
1'inquietude  un  nornbre  infini  de  gens  peu  fortunes  qu'elle  amenait  A 
redouter  (a  tort  ou  &  raison)  de  voir  disparaitre  avant  la  fin  de  leurs 
contrats  les  compagnies  d'assurances  auxquelles  ils  avaient  confie  une 
si  grande  partie  de  leurs  economies,  seule  precaution  qu'ils  eussent 
prise  contre  les  coups  si  redout^s  du  destin ;  cette  loi  ruinait  enfin  le 
credit  de  1'Italie  pres  de  la  haute  finance  europeenne,  largemeut 
interess^e  dans  de  nombreuses  compagnies  d'assurances  operant  dans 
la  p^ninsule,  et  qui  ne  pouvait  tolerer  avec  resignation  une  confiscation 
aussi  inopinee.  Je  ne  peux  vraiment  pas  m'exphquer  comment  un 
homme  dou6  d'une  aussi  longue  experience  politique  que  M.  Giolitti 
ait  pu  conserver  aussi  longtemps  1'illusion  qu'une  loi  congue  de  la  sorie 
put  etre  approuvee." 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     361 

that  the  interests  of  their  own  "  nationals  "  are  not 
injured  by  such  legislation. 

"  By  the  very  fact  of  their  co-existence  in  multiple,  homogeneous 
and  independent  groups,  modern  nations  have  become  alive  not  only 
to  their  rights  but  to  their  obligations,"  writes  Maitre  Clunet;  and  his 
views  are  corroborated  by  Professor  von  Bar  for  Germany,  Professor 
Holland  for  Great  Britain,  Professor  Lamsnarch  for  Austria,  Professor 
Alberic  Rolin  for  Belgium,  Professor  Lyon-Caen  for  France,  Professors 
Anzelotti  and  Gabba  for  Italy,  Councillor  of  State  Asser  for  Holland, 
and  Professor  Boguin  for  Switzerland.  "  To  avoid  anarchy,  or  sterile, 
endless,  sanguinary  strife,  modern  nations  have  followed,  in  time  of 
war  as  well  as  in  time  of  peace,  certain  customs  and  traditions.  The 
continued  conformity  to  these  rules  of  conduct  has  resulted  in  the 
creation  of  a  kind  of  common  law,  which  presents  the  greater  resist- 
ance to  negative  criticism  because  it  is  purely  empiric.  From  the 
interpenetration  of  peoples  by  the  communication  of  ideas,  by  the 
contact  of  individuals,  by  the  dove-tailing  of  moral  and  material 
factors,  there  has  resulted  a  formidable  mingling  of  interests,  sentiments 
and  needs.  From  this  common  law  of  civilized  nations,  as  now  fixed 
by  the  experience  and  the  common  consent  of  the  most  enlightened 
among  them,  it  is  possible  to  deduce  the  following  principles : — 

"  States,  in  virtue  of  the  right  of  sovereignty,  are  independent. 
This  fact  confers  on  them  the  faculty  of  legislating  on  their  territory, 
according  to  their  own  views  and  needs. 

"  States,  however,  by  definition,  find  solitary  existence  repugnant ; 
they  are  unable  to  live  in  isolation,  even  though  that  isolation  be 
splendid.  Whatever  their  condition,  they  form  part  of  the  civilized 
Community,  of  the  Magna  Civitas,  of  the  maxima  respublica  gentium, 
This  necessity  is  inherent  in  the  nature  of  things ;  it  is  impossible  for 
States  to  avoid  it,  and  the  necessity  engenders,  and  imposes  on  them, 
certain  rights  and  duties. 

"  The  fact  of  their  co-existence  imposes  on  States  certain  limits,  not 
to  the  enjoyment,  but  to  the  exercise,  of  their  right  of  sovereignty. 

"  This  limit  is  fixed  at  the  point  where  the  right  of  the  other  States 
to  a  reasonable  and  equitable  treatment,  for  themselves  or  their 
dependents,  in  international  relations,  begins  to  make  itself  felt. 

"  Collective  right,  of  which  sovereignty  is  the  expression,  comports, 
like  individual  right,  a  jus  utcndi  et  abulen&ij  but  the  jus  abutendi 
stops  normally  when  grave  damage,  damnum  latum,  is  knowingly 
done  to  third  parties  in  the  exclusively  personal  interest  and  advantage 
of  the  State  which  is  the  author  of  the  injury. 

"  If,  from  political  or  economic  considerations  of  a  domestic  order, 
a  State  feels  called  on  to  infringe  these  principles,  such  aa  act  gives 


362  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

rise  to  a  demand  for  material  reparation  or  a  compensatory  indemnity, 
according  to  the  forms  accepted  by  international  custom. 

"  Thus,  a  State  which,  notably  with  regard  to  its  trade,  should  adopt 
a  system  of  complete  isolation,  would  thereby  renounce  the  enjoyment 
of  the  common  law  of  nations." 

This  clear  and  logical  statement  is  not  merely  the 
verdict  of  a  certain  number  of  specialists  in  international 
law ;  it  represents  as  well  the  point  of  view  of  reflecting 
public  opinion ;  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  ideal  of 
international  relationship  which  it  expresses  tends  more 
and  more,  notwithstanding  such  manifestations  as  the 
Coup  d'Agadir,  to  become  the  aim  of  practical  states- 
men in  the  present  day.  It  is  because  statesmen  like 
Mr.  Roosevelt  and  Mr.  Henry  Cabot  Lodge,  and  special- 
ists like  Rear- Admiral  Mahan,  were  so  keenly  alive  not 
merely  to  the  paramount  importance  of  the  Panama 
Canal  for  the  National  Defence  of  the  United  States,  but 
also  to  the  consensus  of  international  juristic  opinion  as 
to  the  general  principle  of  the  subordination  of  the 
sovereign  right  of  a  State  to  the  other  ideal  of  human 
and  international  solidarity,  that  they  so  stubbornly 
contested  in  advance  the  wisdom  of  Mr.  Taft's  proposed 
unrestricted  arbitration  treaties,  which  would  have 
rendered  "  justiciable  "  just  such  questions  as  the  closing 
of  the  Canal  in  time  of  war  to  an  enemy's  war-ships,  or 
as  the  right  of  the  United  States  to  eject  from  the  coast- 
line adjoining  the  Canal  corporations  purposing  to  ac- 
quire territory  for  transfer  to  a  Foreign  Power,  even 
under  the  apparently  inoffensive  forms  of  joint-stock 
companies.  The  opening  of  the  Canal  will  not  diminish, 
but  aggravate  that  distrust  of  the  United  States  which 
marks  the  rapidly  growing  nationalism  of  the  South 
American  States.1  Pan-Americanism  will  become  more 

1  President  Wilson,  in  a  speech  at  Mobile  before  the  Southern 
Commercial  Congress,  commented  as  follows  on  the  opening  of  the 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     363 

than  ever  a  Utopia.  And  while  the  opening  of  the 
Canal  may  make  it  possible  to  apply  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine, and  in  a  more  pronounced  form,  in  Central 
America,  in  the  Caribbean,  and  in  the  Pacific  Coasts  of 
Mexico,  it  will  be  a  less  and  less  applicable  principle  of 
South  American  action.1 

These  and  other  pretensions  put  forward  by  the  United 
States  Government  may,  therefore,  conceivably,  sooner 

Panama  Canal :  "  The  future  is  going  to  be  very  different  for  this 
hemisphere  from  the  past.  These  States  lying  to  the  south  of  us  ... 
will  now  be  drawn  closer  to  us  by  innumerable  ties,  and,  I  hope,  chief 
of  all  by  the  tie  of  a  common  understanding  of  each  other.  Interest 
does  not  tie  nations  together.  It  sometimes  separates  them ;  but 
sympathy  and  understanding  does  unite  them.  It  is  a  spiritual  union 
which  we  seek."  The  hasty  and  confused  thought  of  this  eloquent 
and  noble  language  is  the  sort  of  utterance  which  Spinoza  has 
stigmatized  (see  p.  70).  Cf.  p.  193  et  seq. 

1  The  "  Drago  Doctrine,"  formulated  in  1902  by  the  Argentine 
Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs,  with  reference  to  the  measures  of  coercion 
taken  against  Venezuela  by  Germany,  England,  and  Italy,  laid  down 
the  principle  that,  as  the  inviolability  of  States  is  a  fundamental 
principle  of  International  Law,  national  indebtedness  shall  not  be 
allowed  to  warrant  armed  intervention  on  the  part  of  the  creditor,  and 
still  less  justify  the  occupation  of  American  soil  by  any  European 
Power.  The  Monroe  Doctrine  was  thereby  unexpectedly  reinforced. 
But  at  the  same  time  the  national  self-consciousness  of  one  of  the 
most  powerful  of  the  South  American  States  was  for  the  first  time 
formally  affirmed,  and  while  Europe  was  duly  impressed,  Washington 
had  no  illusions  as  to  the  potential  import  of  the  Declaration  of  the 
Argentine  Foreign  Minister.  A  still  further  affirmation  of  South 
American  self-sufficiency  was  made  when  the  so-called  A.B.C.  Powers 
(Argentine,  Brazil,  and  Chili)  proffered  their  good  offices  as  mediators 
in  1914  in  the  absurd  difficulty,  created  by  President  Wilson,  between 
Washington  and  Mexico.  Whatever  the  ultimate  consequences  of 
A.B.C.  mediation  in  the  Wilson-Huerta  dispute,  one  thing  is  certain  : 
President  Wilson's  policy  has  furnished  the  South  American  States 
the  pretext  they  have  long  desired  for  reminding  the  United  States 
that,  while,  perhaps,  they  may  be  ready  to  co-operate  in  the  appli- 
cation of  an  enlarged  Monroe  Doctrine,  they  are  masters  in  their  own 
house,  and  that  North  American  Imperialism  must  disport  itself  north 
of  Yucatan. 


364  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

or  later,  find  themselves  in  opposition  with  the  national 
interests  of  rival  Governments  plausibly  justified  by  a 
more  up-to-date  interpretation  of  international  law ; 
and  in  such  a  case  the  question  could  be  decided  only 
by  the  nation  or  nations  possessing  the  greatest  naval 
or  military  power.  "  International  law  is  something  with 
no  sanction  behind  it." l  Hence  the  need  for  the  United 
States,  as  a  corollary  to  the  fortifying  of  the  Panama 
Canal,  to  build  a  powerful  battle  fleet  rendering  it  pre- 
dominant hi  the  Caribbean,  and  perhaps  in  the  Pacific. 
If  the  Mahans,  the  Roosevelt  s,  the  Lodges  are  wrong ; 
if  the  Canal  be  not,  as  President  Hayes  argued  that  it 
was,  part  of  the  coast-line  of  the  United  States,  but 
merely  an  international  highway  of  as  little  direct  inter- 
est to  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  States  of  the  Union  as 
the  Suez  Canal,  then  the  United  States  can  spare  itself 
the  expense  of  a  fleet,  and  of  naval  bases  at  Guantanamo 
and  in  the  Canal  Zone.  But  if  that  view  were  to  be 
taken  in  Washington,  naval  bases  would  quickly  be 
built  by  World-Powers  that  have  learned  by  hard  ex- 
perience never  to  defer  the  taking  of  defensive  precau- 
tions. 

Fortunately — or  unfortunately,  as  it  may  be  regarded 
— the  United  States  has  no  choice.  By  the  mere  fact  of 
deciding  to  construct  a  Canal  at  Panama  it  crossed  the 
Rubicon,  took  the  step  from  which  there  is  no  going 
back,  and  definitively  sealed  the  destiny  opened  for  it 
in  1898,  when  it  drove  Spain  out  of  Cuba.  At  any 
moment  during  the  years  succeeding  the  Spanish-Ameri- 
can War,  even  after  its  grave  decision  virtually  to  annex 
the  Philippines,  at  any  moment  previous  to  the  glorious 

1  Remark  of  Sir  Edward  Grey  in  the  debate  (June  17,  1914)  on  the 
Bill  for  the  acquisition  of  shares  of  loan-capital  of  the  Anglo-Persian 
Oil  Company  (The  Times,  Juue  18,  1914,  p.  12;. 


and  fatal  resolution  to  build  the  Panama  Canal,  it  might 
have  undone  the  consequences  of  its  past,  thwarted  its 
destiny,  and  remained  isolated  from  the  European  and 
Asiatic  worlds,  a  self-sufficient  mistress  of  half  the 
North-American  Continent,  and  Protector  and  Over- 
lord of  Latin-America.  The  Panama  Canal  has  changed 
all  that.  The  United  States  is  now  out  in  the  open. 
It  is  shortly  to  be  swept  into  the  centre  of  the  world's 
currents  and  counter-currents,  and  it  must  learn  to  trim 
its  sails  to  the  winds  against  which  the  other  Powers 
are  tacking,  and  to  look  out  for  the  pirate  fleets  of  its 
rivals.  The  Panama  Canal,  which  is  the  gateway  to 
the  Eastern  Pacific,  will  be  the  only  highway  between 
the  three  coasts  of  the  United  States,  and,  as  Rear- 
Admiral  Mahan  has  pointed  out,  it  will  impose  upon 
America  a  great  national  obligation,  that  of  securing 
her  influence  (not  her  supremacy)  in  the  Pacific.  A 
strong  American  Navy  has  become  a  vital  necessity  for 
the  security  of  the  United  States.  America  has  courted 
a  great  responsibility,  and  she  must  rise  to  it,  or  pay 
the  consequences  by  dismemberment. 

It  is,  furthermore,  of  grave  significance  that  the  United 
States  is  assuming  these  new  responsibilities,  that  it  is 
coming  forth  definitively  from  its  magnificent  isolation, 
just  after  the  failure  of  its  endeavours  to  bring  about 
the  Reciprocity  Treaty  with  its  Northern  neighbour, 
England's  great  Dominion.  The  success  of  this  scheme 
would  have  contributed  to  the  downfall  of  England. 
Its  failure  has  saved  the  British  Empire ;  but  at  the 
same  time  it  has  flung  the  United  States  back  on  its 
own  resources,  and  it  now  finds  itself  face  to  face  with 
a  Foreign  Power  as  morally  self-sufficient  as  itself,  no 
less  rich  and  enterprising  than  it,  and  as  suddenly 
awakened  to  a  sense  of  the  practical  realities  of  world- 


366  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

politics.  The  new  situation  thus  presented  (mainly  as 
one  of  the  most  significant  corollaries  of  Germany's  per- 
sistent aggressiveness)  raises  again  for  the  United  States 
a  question  it  fancied  it  had  settled  seventy  years  ago 
by  the  Webster-Ashburton  Treaty  of  1842.1  Some  fifteen 
years  ago  Mr.  Chamberlain  put  it  to  her  afresh  :  "  Do 
the  Great  Lakes  divide  two  enemies  ?  Is  an  Anglo- 
American  Alliance  useful  ?"  But  the  scope  of  the  ques- 
tion is  shortly  to  become  wider.  As  the  fatal  day  of 
the  opening  of  the  Canal  approaches,  Washington  will 
begin  to  ask  itself  another  question :  "  Is  an  Anglo- 
American  Entente  imperative  ?"  Sir  Edward  Grey 
aimed  at  securing  an  American  Alliance  by  means  of 
an  unlimited  Arbitration  Treaty,  and  failed.  There  are 
perils  and  special  contingencies  in  the  new  responsibili- 
ties imposed  on  the  United  States  as  it  finds  itself  at 
last  in  the  thick  of  the  warring  interests  of  the  world- 
powers — England  and  her  Dominions,  Germany  and 
Italy,  South  American  Pan-Latinism,  Japan  and  Russia ; 
and  these  perils  may  make  it  more  than  a  mere  matter 
of  convenience  to  come  to  an  explicit  political  under- 
standing with  the  British  Empire.  It  is  not  merely 
that  England,  the  United  States  and  France  have  com- 
mon commercial  interests  all  along  the  Eastern  Pacific, 
interests  which  they  cannot  share  with  Germany,  who 
is  already  at  so  many  points  a  triumphant  competitor. 
It  is,  as  Rear-Admiral  Mahan  has  so  conclusively  shown, 
that  the  great  effect  of  the  Panama  Canal  will  be  the 
indefinite  strengthening  of  Anglo-Saxon  institutions 
along  the  North-East  shores  of  the  Pacific,  from  Alaska 
to  Mexico,  by  multiplying  the  inhabitants  of  those  re- 
gions and  by  a  consequent  augmentation  of  shipping 

1  See  "One  Hundred  Years  of   Peace,"  by  Henry  Cabot   Lodge, 
The  Outlook,  January  4,  1913. 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     367 

and  commerce.  Moreover,  the  identity  of  feeling  be- 
tween the  North -American  Pacific  and  Australia,  both 
inheritors  of  the  same  political  tradition,  as  to  the  ques- 
tion of  Asiatic  immigration,  is  certain  to  create  political 
sympathies,  and  may  draw  into  a  common  action  the 
nations  of  which  each  forms  a  part.  The  question  of 
Asiatic  immigration  is,  indeed,  one  on  which  Canada, 
the  Western  United  States,  Western  South- America, 
Australia,  and  the  rulers  of  the  Islands  of  the  Pacific, 
are  all  at  one.  It  is  a  question  in  which  the  Triple 
Entente  agrees  with  the  United  States.  It  is  a  question 
on  which  the  four  countries  will  continue  to  agree  for 
many  years  to  come.  It  is  a  question  on  which  the 
members  of  the  Triple  Entente  disagree  with  Japan  and 
China,  and  India,1  and  to  a  certain  degree  even  with 
Germany.  The  Panama  Canal  will  thus  undoubtedly 
tend  to  Europeanize  the  North-Eastern  and  South- 
western Pacific,  while  it  leaves  the  Western  Pacific 
Asiatic. 

But  the  important  fact  is  that,  just  at  the  moment 
when  the  opening  of  the  Panama  Canal  is  linking  the 
general  interests  of  the  new  British  Empire  and  of  the 
United  States  in  the  Pacific,  America's  need  of  English 
sympathy  and  friendliness  is  increased  by  the  fact  that 
the  Canadian  border  will  soon  cease  to  be  a  colonial 
boundary  and  become  really  a  British  Imperial  Frontier ; 
that  a  new  Canadian  fleet,  which  is  a  British  fleet,  is 
constructing  North  of  Colon,  while  an  Australian  fleet, 
and  perhaps  a  New  Zealand  fleet,  will  shortly  be  sailing 
up  out  of  the  South-West  and  meeting  the  Canadian 
ships  in  the  roadstead  at  Kingston.  Just  as  for  many 
years  the  fleets  of  the  world  have  entered  the  Mediter- 
ranean under  England's  guns  at  Gibraltar,  so  henceforth 
1  See  the  case  of  the  Komagata  Maru,  p.  228. 


368  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

the  ironclads  and  merchant  vessels  of  the  Powers  will 
pass  from  the  Caribbean  to  the  Pacific  between  the  forti- 
fications of  the  United  States.    But,  magnificent  vantage 
point  as  that  of  the  Americans  will  be,  let  them  cherish 
no  illusions  as  to  its  meaning.     The  geographical  centre 
of  gravity  will  have  been  shifted  from  the  Mediterranean 
to  the  Caribbean,  and  national  isolation,  freedom  from 
"  entangling  alliances,"  will  no  longer  be  possible  for  the 
United  States.  Established  finally  in  the  seat  of  customs, 
the  Americans  will  henceforth  have  to  reason  and  act  as 
political  animals,  in  conformity  with  the  prejudices  and 
customs  of  the  world.     Nothing  is  more  obvious  than 
that  now  at  last  the  United  States,  having  issued  from 
its  isolation,  having  become,  sooner  than  it  expected, 
perhaps  sooner  than  it  wished,  a  responsible,  and  no  mere 
dilettante  member  of  the  concert  of  nations,  will  be  called 
on  by  those  nations,  driven,  that  is,  by  the  force  of  things, 
to  conform  its  favourite  principle  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
to  the  Law  of  Nations.  No  spasmodic,  provisional,  merely 
empirically  opportunist  readjustment  of  that  Doctrine  to 
this  or  that  new  need  or  situation,  as  they  may  arise,  will 
any  longer  be  tolerated.    The  attempt  to  defer  the  com- 
plete solution  of  this  grave  problem  by  arousing  waves 
of  enthusiasm  in  favour  of  Hague  Conferences,  unre- 
stricted Arbitration  Treaties,  or  any  other  desirable  and 
elevated  form  of  the  humanitarian  and  Christian  ideal 
of  Pacifism,  will  be  regarded  as  hypocritical,  and  may 
even  suggest  the  cuttle-fish  policy  of  spurting  forth  an 
inky  channel  to  cover  its  escape  from  its  pursuers.  Mean- 
while the  most  elementary  attempt  to  preserve  the  essence 
ot  its  great  national "  Doctrine,"  while  introducing  it  into 
the  recognized  corpus  of  International  Law,  will  prove  to 
the  United  States  the  wisdom  of  becoming  as  speedily  as 
possible  a  strong  naval  and  military  Power.     The  same 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     369 

self-interest  will  suggest  the  parallel  prudence  of  not 
doing  anything  to  alienate  the  vast  Imperial  Community 
of  men  of  its  own  flesh  and  blood,  who,  previously  sepa- 
rated from  it  by  an  estranging  sea,  have  now  become  its 
close  neighbours,  and  even  a  possible  menace  to  its  in- 
sufficiently protected  borders. 

If,  from  failure  to  divine  the  inevitable  drift  of  the 
time,  to  distinguish  clearly  the  character  of  the  forces  to 
which  it  must  conform,  the  United  States,  repudiating 
its  idealistic  past,  were  to  suffer  serious  friction  to  be  set 
up  along  the  new  frontiers  now  uniting  it  to,  instead  of 
dividing  it  from,  the  British  Empire ;  if  it  were  to  let 
the  problems  created  by  the  Panama  Canal  engender 
between  it  and  England,  Canada  and  Australia,  such  ill- 
feeling  as  would  prepare  the  diplomatic  ground  at  Wash- 
ington for  the  signing  of  an  entente  between  Berlin  and 
Washington  for  their  common  defence  against  British 
and  Russo-Japanese  competition,  both  military  and  com- 
mercial— should  it  drift  into  such  a  situation,  it  would 
have  to  bear  the  responsibility  of  an  act  which  would 
upset  the  entire  balance  of  power  in  Europe,  and  result 
in  a  war  involving  the  interests  of  the  entire  population 
of  our  planet.  The  United  States,  alone  among  the  strong 
nations,  lived,  up  to  the  last  ten  years  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  under  self-imposed  limitations  of  two  sorts — one 
that  had  to  do  with  geography,  and  another  that  had  to 
do  with  public  morality.  As  ex-President  Harrison  put 
it,  only  ten  years  ago,  "  We  do  not  want,  in  any  event, 
territorial  possessions  that  have  no  direct  relation  to  the 
body  of  our  national  domain,  and  we  do  not  want  any 
territory  anywhere  that  is  acquired  by  criminal  aggres- 
sion."1 But  now  America  has  become  a  World-Power. 

1  North   American   Review,    "  Musings    upon    Current    Topics," 
February  15,  1901. 

BB 


370  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

She  is  a  new-comer  among  the  World-Powers,  and  she  is 
an  innocent1  member  of  the  international  band  of  land- 

1  Her  "  innocence  "  is  really  what  the  Germans  would  call  "  colossal." 
In  November  1911  the  President  of  the  United  States  published,  in 
the  Woman's  Home  Companion,  an  article  on  "  The  Dawn  of  World 
Peace,"  which  was  speedily  reproduced  in  a  special  bulletin  of  the 
"American  Association  for  International  Conciliation."  In  that  article 
President  Taft  said  :  "  If  the  United  States  has  a  mission,  besides 
developing  the  principles  of  the  brotherhood  of  man  into  a  living, 
palpable  force,  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is  to  blaze  the  way  to  universal 
arbitration  among  the  nations.  ...  It  is  known  to  the  world  that  we 
do  not  covet  the  territory  of  our  neighbours,  or  seek  the  acquisition  of 
lands  on  other  continents.  We  are  free  of  such  foreign  entanglements 
as  frequently  conduce  to  embarrassing  complications.  .  .  .  The  spirit 
of  justice  governs  our  relations  with  other  countries,  and  therefore  we 
are  specially  qualified  to  set  a  pace  for  the  rest  of  the  world."  Not 
nine  months  later — at  a  moment,  moreover,  when  American  marines 
were  guarding  the  railway  lines  in  Nicaragua — a  friendly  European 
Government  was  making  repeated  representations  to  the  American 
Government  against  the  alleged  disloyalty  of  the  United  States  in 
passing,  relative  to  the  Panama  Canal,  a  law— the  "  Panama  Tolls  Act " 
of  August  24,  1912 — which  the  friendly  Power  in  question  holds  to  be 
an  infringement  of  treaty  obligations.  It  is  evident  that  since,  as 
President  Taft  says,  the  United  States  is  "known  to  the  world  as  a 
Power  that  does  not  covet  the  territory  of  its  neighbours,"  and  since 
"  the  spirit  of  justice  governs  the  relations  of  the  United  States  with 
other  countries,"  he  himself  beautifully  "  blazed  the  way" — as  he  put 
it — to  arbitration  on  the  question  raised  by  the  protest  of  the  British 
Government.  Mr.  Taft  belatedly  admitted  this  in  an  address  on 
January  4, 1913,  before  the  International  Peace  Forum.  He  promised, 
"  if  necessary ,"  to  submit  the  Panama  Canal  Tolls  Dispute  to  arbitra- 
tion. This  promise  was  not  made,  however,  until  after  American 
public  opinion  had  forced  the  hand,  as  it  were,  of  his  Administration ; 
and  in  the  same  breath  he  defended  the  treaties  he  had  concluded  with 
England  and  France  for  the  settlement  even  of  questions  of  national 
honour  by  arbitration,  declaring  that  the  nations  of  the  world  look  to 
the  United  States,  and  "properly  look  to  the  United  States,"  as  a  leader 
in  the  matter  of  establishing  peace,  "  because  we  are  so  fortunately 
placed  between  oceans  and  without  troublesome  neighbours  [sic]  that 
we  can  go  on  without  fear  of  consequences  [sic]  to  establish  a  condition 
in  which  we  shall  settle  every  question  [sic]  by  reference  to  an  arbitral 
tribunal."  It  remained  for  President  Taft's  successor,  Mr.  Wilson,  in 
the  face  of  great  opposition,  to  save  the  honour  of  American  diplomacy, 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     371 

grabbers  whose  principle  of  action  is  reciprocal  vigilance 
during  their  free-booting  raids,  lest  any  one  obtain  a 
little  more  soil  than  his  neighbour.  The  only  influences 
in  the  world  capable  of  putting  an  end  to  these  predatory 
methods  are  the  combined  forces  of  the  new  British 
Empire,  and  a  self-denying  United  States  and  France. 
Were  the  Americans  of  the  United  States,  in  the  present 
state  of  the  world,  to  succumb  to  the  blandishments  of 
Germany,  and  accept  any  exclusive  arrangement  with  that 
Power,  they  would  be  selling  their  birthright,  sacrificing 
the  essentials  of  what  has  made  their  history  worth  any- 
thing in  the  world's  annals,  and  losing  their  "  lives,  their 
fortunes  and  their  sacred  honour."1 

It  was  a  dream  of  Jefferson,  at  the  end  of  his  life, 
that  Cuba  and  Canada  should  one  day  be  incorporated 
in  the  United  States.  A  part  of  this  dream  has  been  ful- 
filled :  the  United  States  now  possesses  its  "  South  Coast 
Line,"  extending  from  Cuba  to  Colon  and  Panama,  and 
it  chances  that  that  line  is  to  be  one  of  the  new  axes, 

by  forcing  on  the  Senate  and  the  House  of  Representatives  a  "  Panama 
Tolls  Bevision  Act,"  repealing  the  law  of  August  1912,  against  which 
England  bad  protested.  This  measure,  signed  June  15, 1914,  had  been 
defended  by  M.  Philippe  Bunau-Varilla,  Senators  Boot  and  Lodge, 
Mr.  Roosevelt,  Dr.  Murray  Butler,  and  the  more  responsible  organs  of 
public  opinion  in  the  United  States.  The  regime  of  navigation  in  the 
Panama  Canal  is  thus  assimilated  to  that  of  the  Suez  Canal.  The 
United  States,  which  is  free  to  fortify  the  Canal,  may  offset  any  possible 
disadvantages  accruing  to  its  Merchant  Marine  from  its  recognition  of 
the  principle  of  equality  of  treatment  as  regards  tolls,  by  establishing 
a  system  of  bounties  for  its  Merchant  Marine,  or  by  subsidizing  its 
coastwise  trade.  But,  by  the  Hay-Bunau  Varilla  treaty  and  the  Hay- 
Pauncefote  treaty,  now  solemnly  sanctioned  by  the  "  Panama  Tolls 
Revision  Act,"  the  United  States  is  forbidden  to  make  such  subsidies 
under  the  form  of  exemption  from  tolls. 

1  "  England,  and  not  the  United  States,"  says  the  author  of  The 
Day  of  the  Saxon,  "  guarantees  the  independence  of  American  nations  ; 
and  in  the  preservation  of  the  British  Empire  rather  than  in  the 
doctrine  of  Monroe  is  to  be  found  the  basis  of  their  security." 


372  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

perhaps  the  one  new  axis,  of  world-policy.     The  other 
part  of  the  dream  seems  less  likely  to  be  realized ;  the 
disintegration  of  the  British  Empire,  which  M.  Garcia- 
Calderon  in  his  Latin  Democracies  of  America  (p.  367) 
prophesied  "  would  be  the  work  of  the  Yankees,"  seems 
a  contingency  more  remote  than  ever.     Mexico,  which 
Japan  has  already  been  trying  to  colonize,  may  before 
long  become  dependent  on  the  United  States,  as  the 
dummy  State  of  Panama  virtually  is  already,  and  as 
Central  America  will  unquestionably  be  within  a  rela- 
tively brief  time.   But  these  embarrassingly  advantageous 
strategic   additions  to  its  territory  will  not   give   the 
United  States  a  fleet  or  any  army ;   they  will  not  help 
it   to  compete  with  the  commercial  enterprise  of   the 
rival  Powers  in  the  ports  of  the  Eastern  Pacific ;  they 
will  not  arrest  the  magnificent  movement  of  the  nations 
in   their  preparation   for   the    economic    (and   perhaps 
military)  struggle  of  which  the  Pacific   Ocean  is  soon 
to  be  the  scene.     The  Americans  have  been  dredging 
their  harbour  at  San- Juan  in  Porto  Rico  since  1908, 
and  have  already  given  it  an  average  depth  of  twenty- 
eight   feet.     Galveston,   where   they   are   still   hard   at 
work,  is  rapidly  becoming  the  third  Atlantic  Port   of 
the  United   States.      Key  West    has  been  bridged   to 
the    Continent,  over    100   miles   at   sea,  by   a   railway 
that  is  one  of  the  marvels  of  modern  engineering.     At 
Santiago,  in  Cuba,  and  at  Colon,  the   Americans   are 
constructing  feverishly  and  well.     But  meanwhile  the 
Germans  are  prospecting  the  Caribbean  and  the  Gulf 
of   Mexico  for   coaling  stations   or   ports   of   call,  and 
after  having  tried  to  secure  a  coaling  station  at  Haiti, 
have  already  settled  on  a  point  in  the  Danish  West 
Indies,  the  island  of  Saint  Thomas,  which  the  United 
States  tried  to  buy  in  1902,  yet  which  Danish  national- 


A  STUDY  OF  INTERNATIONAL  POLITICS     373 

ism  seems  now  incompetent  to  hold.  Out  in  the 
Pacific,  west  and  south  of  Panama,  Germany  is  linking 
up  her  possessions  by  wireless  telegraphy,  while,  by  her 
world- wide  schemes  for  the  development  of  her  shipping, 
Germany,  which  has  already  deprived  the  Port  of 
London  of  an  entrepot  trade  with  New  Zealand  of 
about  100,000  tons  per  annum,  is  making  a  magni- 
ficent fight  for  supremacy  as  a  carrier  in  that  ocean. 
When  the  Canal  is  opened,  France  will  have,  a  little 
to  the  south  of  the  British  Imperial  "All-Red  Route," 
an  All-Blue  Route  belting  the  globe.  The  belt  of 
French  Colonies  or  Possessions  reaches  from  Tahiti 
through  the  Canal,  by  Guadeloupe  and  Martinique 
to  Dakar,  thence  to  Bordeaux  and  Brest  and,  by 
the  Rhone  Valley,  to  Marseilles,  where,  once  again 
taking  to  the  sea,  and  skirting  the  North-African 
Coast  from  Algiers  to  Bizerta,  it  proceeds  through 
the  Suez  Canal  to  Jibutil  in  the  Gulf  of  Aden,  and  to 
the  Grand  Comores,  Madagascar  and  La  Reunion  in 
the  Indian  Ocean.  It  then  turns  northward,  touching 
Asia  at  Saigon ;  and,  passing  thence  just  to  the  north 
of  Australia,  finds  in  the  New  Hebrides1  and  in  New 
Caledonia  (where  Australia  may  one  day  procure  the 
iron  of  which  she  stands  in  need)  its  last  station  before 
it  is  riveted  again  at  Tahiti,  in  mid-Pacific.  There  an 
official  mission  is  already  investigating  the  problem  of 

1  The  status  of  the  New  Hebrides  is  still  (in  1914)  only  provisional. 
Since  1906  the  Archipelago  has  been  governed  by  an  Anglo-French 
condominium  to  the  irritation  of  Australia  and  the  English  missionaries. 
The  consequence  has  been  constant  quarrelling  and  dispute  between 
the  English,  or  rather  the  Australians,  and  the  French.  Partition  of 
the  Archipelago  would  seem  to  be  the  only  rational  solution.  An 
Anglo-French  Commission  sat  in  London  in  the  spring  of  1914  to 
arrive  at  a  definitive  settlement  of  the  New  Hebrides  question.  The 
Australian  Government  was  represented  on  this  Commission  by  the 
Governor-General's  chef  de  cabinet. 


374  PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 

preserving  for  France  commercial  predominance  in  the 
Polynesian  Seas.  It  is  unnecessary  to  await  official 
confirmation  to  affirm  that  Tahiti,  half-way  between 
New  Zealand  and  Panama,  on  one  of  the  direct  Aus- 
tralasian routes,  is  destined  to  a  great  commercial 
future  provided  France  constructs  in  that  island  a 
modern  port  and  coaling  station.1  If  the  French  sup- 
plement their  maritime  route  through  the  Panama  and 
Suez  Canals  by  an  overland  route ;  if  the  Old  World 
prolongs,  from  Brest  to  Vladivostok  or  Fousan,  the 
great  trunk  railway  lines  of  the  United  States  and 
Canada,  now  linking  San  Francisco  and  Vancouver  to 
New  York  and  Halifax,  the  world  will  wonder  how  a 
trifling  matter  like  that  of  the  Baghdad  railway  could 
ever  have  fired  the  imagination,  and  divided  the  diplo- 
macy of  serious  Powers.2  Evidently  no  nation  has  ever 
had  a  more  glorious  opportunity  than  has  France  at 
this  hour,  of  co-operating  with  the  drift  of  the  time  and 
with  the  nature  of  things  for  the  aggrandizement  of  her 
prestige  as  well  as  for  the  good  of  humanity.  Franco- 
Latin  co-operation  in  South  America,  Anglo-American 
collaboration  in  the  islands,  and  on  the  High  Seas,  of 
the  Pacific ;  a  solemn  Franco-Anglo-American  pact  for 
the  peace  of  the  world :  such  are  the  potential  realities 
which  may  already  be  descried  from  the  heights  above 
Culebra. 

1  For  a  more  detailed  treatment  of  the  future  of  the  relations  of  the 
United  States  and  France  in  connexion  with  the  Panama  Canal  see 
the  author's  lecture,  delivered  at  the  Theatre  Michel,  Paris,  on 
February  12,  1913,  and  reproduced  in  a  volume  published  by  Alcan. 

3  See  "  La  France  et  le  Monde  de  Demain,"  by  M.  Victor  Berard, 
and  the  series  of  articles  on  "  Les  Ports  Americains  et  le  Canal,"  by 
M.  Casimir  Perier,  in  the  Figaro,  April  and  May,  1912. 


INDEX 


Abarzuza,  Sen  or,  65 

Abbuzia,  341  note 

A.B.C.    Powers,    the,    193    note,    363 

note 

Abdul  Hamid,  149 -151,  154,  155 
Action  Franyaise,  160  note 

Liberile,  104 

Adam,  Madame,  160  note 

Aden,  Gulf  of,  373 

Adowa,  56,  77 

Adrianople,  193  note,  333 

Adriatic,    the,     263    note,    290,    231, 

325 

Aehrenthal,  Count,  8 
his  independence  of  Germany,  12, 

171,   200,    201,   244,   323,    326, 

335 

tears  up  the  Treaty  of  Berlin,  7, 

192 

Aerial  fleet,  German,  77  note,  319 
Afghanistan,  354 
Africa,  8,  27 

East,  62,  253,  254 

North,  306 

North-West,  285  note 

West,  253 

Agadir,  le  Coup  d',  296  note,  299,  303, 
320  note,  362 

circumstances  of,  192,  198,  201. 

315  note 

circumstances   previous   to,    53, 

64  note,  78,  83,  14S,  157,  168, 
170,  173,  188,  205  rote 

results  of,  118,  206,  215,  218-221, 

236,    242,   251,    284,    285,    297, 

312 
-Egean  Sea,  the,  326,  329,  331  note, 

333 

Aide,  Hamilton,  299  note 
Aix-la-Chapelle,  240  note 
Alaska,  366 
Albania,    problem   of,    153,    325,    334 

note,    337    note,    340  342,    344 

note 
Alb  in.  Pierre,  Le    Coup   d' Agadir,    62 

note 

Alexander  II,  Tsar,  xi,  52-55,  74 
—  Ill,  Tsar,  56 

the  Great,  11,  225 

Alexandretta,  307  note,  322 
Alfonso  X1I1,  163 


Algecirae,  Act  of,  118,  192,  285  note, 
341 

Biilow  on,    295  note 

Conference  of,  79,  164,  201,  295 

note 

Roosevelt  at,  29,  358 

Algeria,  242  note,  305 
Algiers.  99,  346 

Aliens  Bill,  the,  316  note 
All-Red  Route,  the,  373 
Alsace-Lorraine,  326,  350 

French  desire  to  recover,  31,  55, 

58,  80,  159,  177-195,  258 

its  treatment  by  Germany,  177, 

189-191 

mines  of,  233-235 

seized  by  Germany,  7,  50,  179, 

184,  197,  244,  278 
Amadis  de  Ganle,  302 
America,  Central,  258 
America,  United  States  of,  as  a  World  - 

Power,  16,  20  note,  27-30,  57, 

63  note,  70,   74,   308,   355-374. 

See  also  Panama  Canal 

Colonial  policy  of,  6,  40 

constitutional    development    of, 

41-43,   121,  134,  137,   139,  141 
note,  145,  202,  209 

economic   conditions   in,    14-27. 

143  note,  269,  272,  274,  310,  310 

immigration  problem  of,  228 

nationalism  in,  11,  16-27 

their  military  and  naval  strength, 

193  note,  214,  357 

their  relations  with  Canada,  158, 

181,  206,  212-221,  365,  367 

their   relations   with    Germany, 

242,  247,  249-251,  259,  260 

their  relations  with  Japan,  349- 

352 

their  war  with  Spain,  29,  57,  74, 

356,  364 
American  Civil  War,  the,  19,  46,  216 

idealism,  IS 

Independence,  War  and  Declara- 

tion of,  4,  29,  216 

transport  system,  4 

Anarchy,  in  England,  309 

-  in  France,  83,  84,  111,  115,  309 

in  Turkey,  155 

Anatolia,  4 


375 


376 


PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 


Andover  Hill,  23 
Andrassy,  Count,  156,  337 
Andr6,  General,  95,  205  note 
Andrieux,  M.,  125  note 
Angell,     Norman,     on     Internationa 
finance,  262,  263,  266  note 

on  labour  unrest,  275-277  note 

The  Great  Ittusion,  183-186,  231 

The  Mirage  of  the  Map,  243 

Angers,  96 

Anglo-French  Agreement,  1904.  See 
Triple  Entente  and  also  under 
England  and  France 

Anglo-Persian  Oil  Company,  329,  364 
note 

Antisemitism,  111 

Antivari,  340 

Antwerp,  11  note,  237,  258,  311 

Anzelotti,  Professor,  361 

Aquitaine,  148 

Aral,  Sea  of,  354 

Arbitration,  international,  16,  70  note 
174,  193  note,  215,  218,  220 
350  note,  362,  366,  368,  370 
note 

Architecture,  national  expression  in,  18 

Ardeche,  the,  44 

Argentine,  the,  193  note,  363  note 

Ariovistus,  38 

Armenia,  French  and  Russian  con- 
cessions in,  306  note,  334 

Arnold,  Matthew,  Essays  in  Critici>fm 
16,  22 

Arques,  174 

Asia  Minor,  332 

Asiatic  immigration,  367 

Asquith,  Rt.  Hon.  H.  H.,  205,  277 
note 

his    constitutional    coup    d'6tat 

207-211 

on  arbitration,  180,  181,  219 

Aeser,  Councillor,  361 
Associations  Law,  the,  103-105,  155 
Assumptionists,  the,  103 
AthensBum  Club,  the,  106  note 
Athenians,  the,  18 

Athens,  332  note 
Atlanta,  215 

Atlantic  Monthly,  The,  246,  273  note 
Atlantic  trade  routes,  309,  373 
Augsburg,  245,  261  note 
Aulard,  M.,  115 
Aumale,  Due  d",  137 
Australia,  Its  interest  in  Panama,  359, 
367 

its  iron  supply,  373 

its  naval  power,  296  note,  313 

its  problem  of  immigration,  351 

its  relations  with  England,  215, 

296  note,  350  note 

Austria-Hungary,  its  economic  con- 
ditions, 272 

its  relations  with  the  Balkans, 

viii,  5  note,  53,  54,  57,  149,  153, 
263  note,  290,  291,  334-347 

its  relations  with   France,    267 

note 


Austria -Hungary,  its  relations  with 
Germany,  51,  52,  153,  201,  244, 
320-347 

its  relations  with  Italy,  52,  77 

note,  320-328,  336-341 

nationalism  in,  11,  12,  263  note, 

343 
Austrian  labour,  239  note 

Baden,  191 

Baghdad  Railway,  the,  58,  171,  194, 
206,  287,  306  note,  322,  374 

Bahrein  Islands,  307  note 

Balfour,  Rt.  Hon.  A.  J.,  on  arbitra- 
tion, 180 

on  German  expansion,  241 

on  King  Edward,  64  note 

on  Royal  Prerogative,  208 

Balkan  League,  the,  formation  of,  xii, 

59  note,  290,  310,  327  note,  334 

its  influence  on  European  poli- 

tics, 53,  136,  148-198,  302,  321- 
347 

Rumanian  blackmail  of,  110  note 

Balkan  Scare,   1912,  5   note,   6,   266 

note,  302 
Balkan  States,  the,  206,  244 

nationalism  in,  11,  58,  264.     See 

also  under  the  separate  States 
Balkan  War,  Inter-,  10  note,  323  note, 

324    note,   329,   331  note,   332 

note,  336,  346 
Balkan  Wars  on  Turkey,  59,  136,  148, 

169-171, 185,  192, 197,  232  note, 

264,  300-304,  321-347 

economic  consequences  of,   339 

note 

Ballin,  Herr,  278  note 
Baltic,  the,  296,  318 
Balzac,  Honore,  270 
Banking  problems,  international,  3-5, 

12,  238-251,  259,  262,  267,  288, 

324  note 

Bar,  Professor  von,  361 
Bardo,  Treaty  of,  52 
Bardoux,  Jacques,  328 
Barrere,  M.,  61,  158  note 
on  the  relations  between  France 

and  Italy,  343,  345  note 
Barres,  Maurice,  113,  189,  331  note 
Barthou,  M.,  165  note 
Bassorah,  306  note 
Bandin,  Pierre,  280,  281,  286 
Bavaria,  270  note 
Bazaine,  180 
Beaconsfleld,  Lord,  156 
Behring's  Sea,  355 
Belgian  capitalists  in  France,  5 

labour,  234  note,  239  note 

Belgium,  361 

coalfields  of,  238,  258 

neutrality  of,  171,  191,  196,  197 

Belgrade,  154,  327  note,  337 
Benedictines,  the,  105 

Benghazi,  289 
B6ranger,  Henri,  134 
Berard,  Victor,  61,  159 


INDEX 


377 


Berard,   Finance  et  Diplomatie,  173 

La  France  et  le  Monde   du    De 

main,  374  note 

Le  Droit  de  Voisinane,  194 

Bcrchtold,  Count,  his  policy  towards 

the  Balkans,  323,  327  note 

his    policy    towards    Italy,    344 

note 

on  the  world  situation,  8,  67 

Berlin,  29,  149,  177,  236,  245  note,  304 

note,  336,  339 

Congress    of,  xii,  51-53,  77,  286, 

340,  342 

Treaty  of,  7,  53,  149,  156,  303, 

325,  332  note 

Bernhardi,  General  von,  240,  242 
Bernier,  25  note 

Bernstein,  Edward,  241  note,  243 
Bertillon,  Jacques,  269,  270 
Betheny,  36 
Bethmann-Hollweg,    Herr    von,    167, 

170,  247 

his  position  as  Chancellor  in  tho 

Constitution,  44,  245  note 

on  Schleswig-Holstein,  197  note 

Bieberstein,  Baron  Marschall  von,  183 

note,  280,  299,  306 
Bielefeld,  247 
Birmingham,  62 
Bismarck,  Prince,  41,  44,  47,  197,  261, 

286,   304 

his  fall,  51,  54,  56,  77 

his     Imperial    policy     destroys 

Europe,  30,  35,  50-54,  72,  78, 
98,  157  note,  301 

his  interview  with  Thiers,  299, 

note 

his  policy  short-sighted,  157  note, 

296,  297 

his  policy  towards  Austria,  52, 

53 

his  policy  towards  the  Balkans, 

xii,  53,  156,  335-342 

his  policy  towards  France,  52-54, 

83  note,  147  note,  160  note,  163 
• his  policy  towards  Russia,  310 

note,  347 
• his  prophecies  falsified,  xi,  xii 

his  protectionist  system,  248 

Bizerta,  305,  329,  332,  341,  373 
Blache,  Captain  Vidal  de  la,  233 
Black  Sea,  the,  French  concessions  in, 

306  note 

Russian  naval  base  in,  77  note, 

329,  332,  334 

trade  in,  9,  10,  290,  337 

Blonde],  Georges,  244  note,  248  note, 

324  note 
Blowitz,  M.  de,  35  note,  52  note,  61 

note,  65  note,  100,  341 
Blumenthal,  M.,  189 
Bochum,  260  note 
Bodium  mines,  279 
Boer  War,  the,  63,  66,  241  note 
Bokhara,  354 
Bompard,  M.,  331  note 
Bonnal,  General,  248  note 


Bordeaux,  129,  178,  373 
Borden,  Mr.,  220,  296  note 
Bosnia,  trade  route  of,  290 
Bosnia-Herzegovina,    annexation    of, 

12,  59  note,  153,  172,  192,  200, 

326,   327   note,   335,   337,   340, 

341 
Bosniak  assassin    of    the    Archduke 

Ferdinand,  328  note 
Bosphorus,  the,  329 
Bossuet,  quoted,  xi,  22 
Boston,  24,  215 
Boulangism,  53,  83,  85,  99,  102,  103, 

133,  141,  189 
Bourbons,  the,  138 
Bourdon,  Georges,  278 
Bourgeois,  M.,  36,  175  note,  311 
Bourges,  Archbishop  of,  104 
Bourget,  Paul,  113 
Bourgin,  Georges,  230  note 
Boxer  riots,  the,  232 
Braun,  M.,  235 
Brazil,   193  note,   238,   245-247,   363 

note 

Bresciani,  Signor.  289 
Brest,  353,  373,  374 
Bretons,  the,  xii  note,  4 
Briand,  M.,  his  Cabinet,  205  note,  283, 

305  note,  311 

his  policy  towards  the  Church, 

95 

his  Republicanism,  136,  142,  311 

on  French  finance,  6  note 

Briey,  234  note,  237,  257 

Brisson,  M.,  101,  178 
British  Columbia,  228  note 
British  Empire.     See  Great  Britain 
British  Museum,  202  note 
Broqueville,  Baron  de,  197  note 
Brunetiere,  M.,  Ill,  113 
Brilnsbuttel,  240  note 
Bucharest,  324  note 

Treaty  of,  324  note,  332  note 

Buckingham  Palace,  213 
Buda-Pest,  321 

Bulgaria,  xii  note.      See   also   under 

Balkans 
begins    the    Inter-Balkan   War, 

323  note,  328  note 
its  alliance  with  Servia,  59,  327 

note,  339  note 

its     financial     relations     with 

France,  5  note,  266   note,  267 
note 

its  relations  with  Germany,  324 

note 

its  relations  with  Turkey,  9,  58, 

151-154,  264,  331  note 

Prince  of,  7 

Bulow,  Prince  von,  Imperial  Oermany, 
295 

upholds  Bismarck's  policy,   78, 

79,  301  note.  321 
Bunau-Varilla,  Philippe,  192,  355,  371 

note 

Bureaucracy  in  France,  121-148 
Burgundy,  xii  note,  24 


PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 


Busch,  Memoirs,  286 
Butler,  Bishop,  198 
Butler,  Dr.  Nicholas  Murray,  70,  371 
note 

Cadiz,  353 
Caen,  165,  260  note 
Caiffa,  306  note 

Caillaux,  M.,  as  Finance  Minister,  84, 
205  note 

hia  Moroccan  policy,  281,   284, 

285,  316  note 

on    international    credit,     243, 

265-268 

California,  19  note,  193  note 
Calvin,  150  note 

Cambon,  Jules,  158  note.  285  note 
Cambon,  Paul,  French  Ambassador  in 

London,  60,  61,  66,  158  note, 

172  note,  315  note 
Canibrai,  Mgr.  de,  96,  97 
Cambridge,  Mass.,  23 
Caineroous,  the,  55,  254,  258,  283,  284 
Canada,  35  note,  247 

her  naval  power,  296  note,  313 

her  reciprocity  with  the  States, 

158,  181,  206,  212-221,  365,  367 

nationalism  in,  11 

Canal  du  Nord-Eet,  258 
Canterbury,  Archbishop  of,  180,  187 
Caribbean   Sea,   the,    303,    319,    355, 

363,  364,  368,  372 
Carrere,  Jean,  326 
Casablanca,  79,  164,  178,  200 
Caspian  Sea,  the,  334,  353,  354 
Catherine  II,  Empress,  333 
Catholicism.     See  Roman  Catholicism 
Central  Africa,  283 
Century  Magazine,  214 
Chamberlain,  Joseph,  15 

on  England's  isolation,  62,  63,  73 

proposes    Imperial    Preference, 

212,  230,  313,  366 
Chanihord,  Comtc  de,  92 
Champagne,  117,  119,  132 
Chari,  the,  284 
Charles  V,  Emperor,  246 
Charles,  King  of  Portugal,  62  note 
Charles,  King    of  Rumania,  323,  324 

note 

Charleston,  215 
Chenier,  Andr6,  135 
Cheradame,   Andre,   La   Crise  Fran- 

caise,  182  note,  267  note 
Chicago,  24 

Chiers,  the,  233,  237,  258 
Chili,  192  note,  193  note,  351,  363  note 
China,  29,  63 

economic    domination    of,    279 

note,  347-354,  356 

German  interest  in,  78,  253,  297 

her  coal -supply,  257 

her  finance,  4 

her  military  impotence,  193  note 

nationalism  in,  11,  232 

China  Sea,  the,  350  note 
Chinese  labour,  229  note,  231,  367 


Chino -Japanese  War,  56,  356 
Chios,  332  note 
Chirol,  Sir  Valentine,  353 
Christian  ia,  40,  319 
Chuquet,  La  Guerre,  175  note 
Churchill,  Rt.  Hon.  Winston,  on  the 
China  Sea,  350  note 

proposes    disarmament,    75,    77 

note,  239 

Civil  Service,  English,  121  note 
French,  120-148 


Cladova,  325  note 
Clemenceau,  M.,  xiii,  60 

his  Cabinet,  101,   127-130,   136, 

178,  205  note 

his  policy  towards  England,  168, 

169 
La  Melee  Sociale,  128 


Clunet,  Maitre  Edward,  360,  361 
Clyde  shipbuilders,  the,  239  note 
Coaling  stations,  French,  374 

German,  372 

Coal-supply,  Chinese,  257 

English,  258,  261  note,  276  note, 

311 

Coblenz,  240  note 
Cochin,  Denys,  34  note 
Colbert,  286 
Colmar,  189 
Cologne,  240  note 
Cologne  Ga:ette,  254  note 
Colon,  351,  367,  371  note,  372 
Colonbelles,  260  note 
Colorado,  193  note 
Colson,  M.,  Organisms  Economiqiie  et 

Desordre  Social,  133  note 
Columbia  University,  70 
Columbus,  Christopher,  354 
Combes,    M.,    as    Premier,    122,    205 

note,  331  note 

his  policy  towards  the  Church, 

89,  91,  104-109 

Commerce,  international,  10,  20  note, 
238-261,  309 

Commercial  Congress,  Southern,  362 
note 

Communist  Union,  the,  227 

Comores,  Grand,  373 

Compiegne,  36 

Comte,  150 

Concordat,  the.  See  Roman  Cath- 
olic Church 

Cond6,  11  note 

Condorcet,  150 

Confederation  Orient  ale  comme  Solu- 
tion de  la  Question  d'Orient,  58 
note 

Confederation  GtneraU  du  Travail, 
La,  128 

Congo,  the,  Franco-German  relations 
in,  4,  243,  254,  258,  263,  284, 
285 

Connecticut,  24 

Constant,  M.  d'Estournclles  de,  175 
note,  180 

Constantinople,  9,  10,  59  note,  142, 
320  note,  321  note,  332  note 


INDEX 


379 


Constantinople,  coup  d'etat  in,  1909, 154 

German  influence   in,    150,    170, 

171,  280,  299,  321 

taken  by  ^he  Turks,  333 

Turks  driven  back  on,  166  note 

Constantza,  324  note 
Constitutionalism,  159 
Copenhagen,  319 

Corea,  193  note,  349,  355 

Corinth,  186 

Corneille.  261 

Correspondant,  Le,  267  note 

Corti,  Count,  340 

Cossacks,  the,  xii 

Costa  Rica,  245 

Courriers  de  Macedoine,  xiii  note 

Coyer,  Abbe,  39 

Creusot  guns,  149 

Crewe,  Marquess  of,  76 

Crillon,  174 

Crimean  War,  the,  4,  74 

Crispi,  Signor,  61,  342 

his    correspondence    with    Lord 

Salisbury,  341,  345 

his  fall,  326 

his    interview    with    Bismarck, 

322,  336-338 

Croix,  La,  102 

Croly,  Mr.,  The  Promise  of  American 
Life,  22,  147 

Crown  Colonies,  their  relation  to  Eng- 
land, 312-317 

Ouppi,  M.,  284 

Crusades,  the,  6 

Cuba,  29,  37,  40,  357,  359,  364,  371 
note,  372 

Culebra,  374 

Curzon,  Viscount,  166,  170 

Cyprus,  332 

Cyrenaica,  289 

Daily  Mail,  259,  275  note,   307,   317 

note 

Dakar,  373 
Dalmatia,  290,  335 
Danish  West  Indies,  372 
Dante,  50 
Danube,  the,  xii,  119  note,   290,   297, 

335    337 
Dardanelles,  the,  332 

closed  by  Turkey,  9,  10,  359 

earthquake  in,  355 

their  importance  to  Russia,  322, 

325    329 

Dauphine.'the.  161 
Defence  Conference,  the,  296  note 
Delaisi,  Francis,  La  Democratic  el  les 

Financiers,  145  note,  185 
Delbiiick,  Professor  Hans,  179,  254 
Delcasse,  M.,  311 
his     blunders    with    regard    to 

Russia,  168,  169 

his  fall,  79,  80,  83,  85,  178,  200 

his  policy  towards  the  Balkans, 

158  note,  324  note 

his  policy  towards  England,  60, 

61,  64  note,  66,  79,  253 


Deloass6,  M.,  his  policy  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean, 61,  66,  163,  178,  286 
note,  288 

Delhi,  315 

Democracy,  power  of  the,  3,  6,  109, 
262,  264  note 

American,  22 

English,  207 

French,  115,  122,  147 

German,  244 

Denmark,  her  neutral  policy,  318 

her  relations  with  Schleswig,  193 

note,  197 
her  West  Indian  island,  372 


D6roulede,  Paul,  45 

Doschanel,  Paul,  149  note 

Detmold,  261 

Deutsche  Revue,  79,  300,  333  note 

Deutscher  Bank,  238 

Diesel  engine,  the,  261  note 

Differdange,  235 

Diplomacy,      economic      aspect      of 

modern,  276-291 
Disarmament,     Churchill's     proposal 

for,  75,  77  note,  239 

French   attitude    to,    175    note, 

176,  181 

Mr.  Taft's  proposal  of,  180 

Norman  Angell  on,  180-185,  231 

Tsar's  appeal  for,  31-35,  56  note 

D Jibuti,  172  note 

Dogger  Bank,  the,  175 

Dominions,    the,    their    relations    to 

England,    215,    269,    296   note, 

350  note 
Dover,  315 

Drago  Doctrine,  the,  363  note 
Dreyfus   Affair,   the,    59,    61,    63,    64 

note,  78,  85,  86,  97,  102,   133, 

160,  175,  271 

its  politico-religious  significance, 

109-114 

Drumont,  134 

Ducrocq,  Georges,  189 

Ducrot,  General,  175  note 

Duluth,  24 

Dumont,  Arsene,  NataliU  et  Civilisa- 
tion, 269,  270 

Dunkirk,  237,  258,  311 

Durazzo,  340 

Dyke,  Dr.  Henry  van,  The  Spirit  of 
America,  19,  26 

Eastern  Alps,  the,  337 

Eastern  Christians,  330 

Eastern  Question,  the,  7,  52,  53,  149 

Echo  de  Paris,  153  note 

Economics,  international,  7-10,  270, 
286-291 

Edict  of  Nantes,  111,  114,  267  note 

Edward  VII,  his  relations  with  Ger- 
many, 79,  241  note 

restores    balance    of    power    in 

Europe,  64,  158,  253,  315 
Edward,  Prince  of  Wales,  315 
Egypt,  English  rule  in,  61,  66,  219, 

253,  290,  346 


380 


PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 


Einen,  General  von,  261 

Electoral  reform,  French,  311 

Eliot,  Ex-President,  216 

Elizabeth,  Queen  of  Rumania,  323 

El  Katr,  307  note 

Elsenborn,  240  note 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  246 

Emmott,  Lord,  316  note 

Empire  Literate,  L',  179 

Ems,  167 

Engels,  227 

England.     See  Great  Britain 

Enver  Bey,  152,  304 

Erythrea,  289 

Escaut,  the,  196 

Esch,  235 

Essen,  Krupp  works  at,  257,  260,  279, 

307 

Etienne,  M.,  205  note 
Eucharistic  Congress,  the,  338 
Eugene,  Archduke,  324 
European  balance  of  power,  163,  168, 

215,    244,    260,    265,    283,    286 

note,    298,    303-309,    330,    343, 

347 

mind,  the,  70  note 

State  loans,  4 

War,  the,  328  note 

Faguet,  M.,  Le  Culte  de  I' Incompe- 
tence .  .  .,  138,  142,  147  note, 
182  note 

Far  East,  the,  Triple  Entente  in,  319, 
347-354 

Farnese  Palace,  the,  343 

Fashoda,  57,  61,  63,  65,  77,  162 

Faure,  Felix,  63  note 

Favre,  Jules,  175  note 

Ferdinand,  Tsar,  154 

Ferroro,  Gnglielmo,  L'Ideal  ei  la 
Richesse,  228 

on  America,  24 

on  Italian  finance,  360  note 

on  Tripoli,  288 

Ferry,  Jules,  hia  educational  system, 
96-98 

his  fall,  84,  85,  89 

on  disarmament,  175  note 

on  separation,  91,  93,  97 

Fez,  284 

Fichte,  xi 

Figaro,  Le,  78  note,  179,  226,  278  note, 

374  note 

Finance,  international.     See  Banking 
Fisher,  Mr.,  218 
Florence,  326 

Flushing,  10  note,  171,  196,  197 
Fortnightly  Review,  "  A   Business-like 

King,"  315  note 
Fouille,  M.,  254 
Fonsan,  355,  374 
France,     Anatole,     La     Revolie     dee 

Anges,  25  note,  71  note 
France  as  an  isthmus,  119 

German  overtures  to,  55-57,  61 

her  Army,  77  note,  86,  113 

her  colonial  expansion,  4,  52-54 


France,  her  Constitutional  evolution, 
40,  42,  45-50,  114-148,203,  205 
note,  207,  268, 309-312 
her  diplomacy,  276,  287 

her    economic    conditions,     17, 

114-148,  237,  265-275 

her  educational  system,  87,  92, 

95-97,  102,  104,  123,  177,  275 
note 

her  financial  system,   4,   5,   69, 

249-251,  259,  262,  265-275 

her  genius,  112-114,  270-273 

her  policy  in  the  Caribbean,  354- 

374 

her  policy  in  the  Far  East,  53, 

109,  347-354 

her  policy  in  the  Mediterranean, 

319-346 

her  policy  in  North  Africa,  29, 

53,  61,  66,  109,  118,  163-172, 
241-243,  281-285,  346.  See 
Agadir,  Morocco,  and  Tangier 

her    politico-economic    relations 

with  Germany,  4,  177,  199, 
200,  211-213,  228,  237-265, 
276-285,  298,  305-308,  311 

her  relations  with   England,   8, 

15,  53-66,  74-80,  118,  162-198, 
214,  258,  295-309 

her  relations  with  Italy,  61,  66, 

106-109 

her  relations  with  Russia,  30-36, 

53-57,  62,  84,  158-198,  296- 
309 

her      relations      with      Servia, 

290 

her  relations   with  the   U.S.A., 

16,  28,  354-374 

her  relations  with  the  Vatican, 

85-109,  126,  312,  330  note 

her  social  system  in  the  light  of 

the  Dreyfus  Affair,  109-114 

Mr.  Roosevelt's  visit  to,  28-30, 

36-40,  44,  47-50,  356 

Napoleon  Ill's  foreign  policy  for, 

68-71 

nationalism  in,  11,  68,  80,  114, 

147,  195 

stability  of  the  Republic,  83-85, 

139,  147, 273 
Franco-German  Agreement,  199,  280- 

285,  295  note,  299 
Franco-German  War,  the,  13  note,  83, 

179,  248,  278 

sequence   of    European    history 

since,  50-80 
French  Civil  Code,  269-272 

idealism,  35,  95,  110,  134,  174, 

270 

Revolution,  1789,  6,  34,  38,  50, 

93, 116, 154, 174 

Scare,  1875,  52,  62  note 

Francis    Ferdinand,    Archduke,    327 

note,  328  note,  345  note 
Francis  Joseph,   Emperor,   323,   327, 

328  note,  339 
Franciscan  friars  ,325 


INDEX 


381 


Frankfort,  Treaty  of,  30,  32,  33,  51,  98, 
156,  182,  186,  190,  192,  257, 
278,  308,  350 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  28 

Frederick,  King  of  Prussia,  xi 

Freeman,  Professor,  70 

Freemasonry  iu  France,  91,  113,  175 

Free  Trj.de,  212,  313 

Freppel,  Mgr.,  96,  98 

Freycinet,  C.  de,  46  note,  89 

Friedrichshof,  79 

Fronde,  J.  A.,  312,  315 

Fullertou,  W.  Morton,  at  Madrid,  65 
—  at  ATersailles,  1896,  31  note 

on  Panama,  37 4  note 

Patriotism  and  Science,  92  note, 

98  note,  134  note,  183  note 
Fuzet,  ilgr.,  90 

Gabba,  Professor,  361 

Galftta,  4 

Galli,     Henri,     Gambetta    ft    V Alsace 

Lorraine,  84  note,  1GO  note 
Galvcston,  372 
Gambetta,  his  influence  and  generous 

faith  in  justice,  34,  38,  80,  100, 

160,  187 

his  policy  towards  Russia,  33 

• on  Alsace-Lorraine,  178 

on   French   domestic  problems, 

89,  94,  127,  136,  140,  331  note 

Gamp,  Baron  dc,  190  note 

Gandhi,  Mr.,  228  note 

Garcia-Calderon,  M.,  Latin  Democra- 
cies of  America,  246  note,  372 

Garibaldi,  6,  28 

Gary,  Indiana,  232  note 

Gascony,  xii  note 

Gasquet,  Cardinal,  105 

Gaston,  Henri,  L'Allemagne  aux  Abois, 
248  note,  257 

Gaul,  4 

Gayraud,  Abbe,  107 

Gazette  de  France,  La,  56  note 

Geneva,  150,  227 

Genghiz  Khan,  11 

George  V.,  King,  analysis  of  his  king- 
ship, 207 

in  Berlin,  304  note 

on  arbitration,  176 

works  for  the  unity  of  the  Em- 

pire, 314-317 
George,  Lloyd,  his  policy,  17,  205,  206 

on  the  British  Empire,  218 

German    capitalists    in    France    and 

Luxembourg,  5,  228,  235,  236, 
256,  259,  260,  276,  311 
German   Empire,   the,   its  aggressive 
policy,  13  note,  15,  16,  52-65, 
118,    132    note,    148,    156-198, 
238-264,  279,  295-302,  333 

its  Agreement  with  France,  199, 

200,    211-213,    266   note,    276- 
287,  295,  303,  311 

its  birth-rate,  269  note 

its  colonial    expansion,   *•   -43- 

217,  233,  26'J,  2S3 


German  Empire,  the,  its  commercial 
ambitions,  63  note,  163,  187, 
238-261,  309,  366,  373 

its   common   spheres   of  action 

with  Entente,  303-309,  318 
its  Constitution,  43,  44,  202,  300 

its  diplomacy,  276-287,  296,  301 

its  failure  to  break  the  Entente, 

77-79,  118,  132  note,  148,  157, 
160-163,  192,  198-223,  262,  297 

its  finances,  69  note,  187,  238, 

249-252,  259,  262,  265 

its  hegemony  and  nationalism, 

7,  12,  13  note,  30,  33,  35,  50, 
53,  136,  148.  161 

its  naval  and  aerial  ambitions, 

55,  62,  74-77,  165,  203,  239- 
241,  256,  263,  278  note,  319 
note,  333 

its  relations   with   Austria,    52, 

153,  200,  201,  244,  320-347 

its  relations  with  England,   79, 

118,  149,  313 

its  relations  with  Italy,   52-56, 

60,  320-347 

its    relations    with    Russia,    13 

note,  52-65,  149,  172,  239  note, 
260,  295-298,  301  note 

its  relations  with  Turkey,  149- 

151,156,  306  note 

its  relationships  with  the  U.&.A., 

16,  242,  247-260 

its  social  and  economic  condi- 

tions, 51,  55,  134  note,  181,  239, 

265,  272-274,  285 

German  labour,  228,  234-237,  239  note 
Gibraltar,  172  note,  367 
Giolitti,  Signor,  326,  342,  360  note 
Gladstone,    William    Ewart,    foreign 

policy  of,  70,  73,  167 
Glasgow,  University  of ,  73 
Gobat,  Albert,  191 
Golconda,  4 

Golden  Rule,  The,  70-72 
Goltz,  Marshal  von  der,  150 
Gontaut-Biron,  M.  de,  M  a  Mission  a 

Berlin,  83  note 
Goodfellow,  Mr.,  255 
Goschen,  Sir  Edward,  74 
Gouthe-Soulard,  M.,  98 
Goyau,    Georges,   L'Idte  de  Patrit  et 

Humanitarians  sme,  175  note 
Grande  Faute  des  Catholiques,  La,  102 
Grande  Revue,  173,  1S5  note 
Great  Britain,  her  Boer  War,  63,  6f., 

241  note 

her  Civil  Service,  121  note 

her   coal-supply,  258,  261  note, 

27 6  note,  311 

her    commercial    rivaJry    with 

Germany,    63    note,    238i-261, 
309 

her  Constitution  and  its  reform, 

42,  202-211,  309,  312-317 

her  domestic  problems.  17,  149, 

158,  184,  198,  211,  269,  272- 
274,  276  note 


382 


PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 


Great  Britain,  her  foreign  policy,  8, 
70-80,  166-181,  196,  279,  2S2 

her  Imperial   power,    158,    206, 

212-221,  296,  312-317,  350  note, 
365-369 

her  military   power,    166,    169, 

180,  333 

her  national  spirit,  11 

her  naval  power,   74,    75,    165,  i 

166  note,  215,  239,  296  note, 
313,  329  note,  350  note 

her  policy  in  the  Caribbean,  354- 

374 

her  policy  in  the  Far  East,  347- 

354 

her  policy  in  the  Mediterranean, 

319-346 

her  relations  with  France,  8,  15, 

30,  53-66,  74-80,  118,  162-198, 
200,  214,  258,  295-309.  See 
the  Triple  Entente 

her  relations  with  Germany,  62- 

65,  253,  318 

her   relations   with    Japan,    56, 

313,  347 

her  relations  with  Luxembourg, 

237 

her  relations  with  Persia,   171, 

172,  194,  254,  306  note,  347,  353 

her  relations  with  Russia,  9,  31, 

58,  62,  63,  194,  254.      See  the 
Triple  Entente 
—  her  relations  with  Servia,  291 

her  relations  with  U.S.A.,  16,  20 

note,    28,    174,    180-182,     216, 

366,  371 

Great  Lakes,  the,  366 
Greece,  Ancient,  3,  6,  22,  24,  225,  258 

Modern,     her     relations     with 

Turkey  and    the    Balkans,  xii 

note,   9,   10  note,   59,   151-155, 

264,  323  note,  332 
Greek  Islands,  the,  322 
Greenwich  meridian,  170 
Grevy,  President,  160,  173 
Grey,  Earl,  221 
Grey,    Sir    Edward,     his    policy    at 

Agadir,  315  note 

his  policy  towards  America,  366 

his  policy  towards  France,   79, 

170, 171 

on  arbitration,  174,  181 

on  German  policy,  261 

on  international  law,  364  nota 

on  Liberal  foreign  policy,  75,  76 

Grundy,    G.    B.,    Thucydides   and   the 

History  of  His  Age,  4  note 
Guadeloupe,  373 
Guantanamo,  359,  364 
Guatemala,  20  note,  245 
Gun-running,  English  and  French,  172 

^     note 
G^mner,  Herr  von,  238 

Hadfleld,  Sir  Robert,  307,  308 
Hague,  The,  29,  36,  159,  175,  176,  181, 
183  note,  197.  295  note,  359,  368 


Haiti,  372 

Haldane,  Viscount,  as  War  Minister, 
76,  166,  170,  333 

his  policy  towards  Canada,  212 

Hal6vy,  Daniel,  Luttes  et  Problemes,  60 

note 

Halifax,  N.S.,  374 
Hamburg,  55,  191,  230,  299 
Hamilton,  146  note 
Hamilton,  General  Sir  Ian,  229  note 
Hanotaux,    M.,   his    policy    towards 

England  and  Germany,  56,  60, 

61,  173,  305 

on  the  French  Constitution,  46, 

47 

Hanseatic  League,  the,  251 
Hansen,  Jules,  Ainbassadc  d  Paris  du 

Baron  de  Mohrenheim,  53  note, 

84 

Hansi,  189  note 

Hapsburg  dynasty,  the,  159,  338 
Hapsburg  Monarchy,  The,  Steed's,  310 

note,  334  note,  336  note 
Harcourt,  Lewis,  317  note 
Hardenberg,  xi 
Harrison,  ex-President,  369 
Harrison,  Frederic,  202  note 
Harvard  University,  216,  246 
Haskovo,  324  note 
Haus,  Admiral,  345  note 
Hawaii,  57,  74,  357 

Hay-Pauncefote  Treaty,  the,  37 1  note 
Hayes,  President,  358,  364 
Heligoland,  244,  253 
Henri  IV,  69,  72,  110,  174 
Henry  of  Prussia,  Prince,  278  note 
Heraclea,  306  note 
Hereford  map,  the,  119  note 
Herouville,  260  note 
Herveism,  147 
History  as  an  art,  xiii 

international  character  of,  67 

Hohenlohe,  Prince,  Memoirs,  83  note 
Hohenzollerns,  the,  31,  159,  323  note, 

338 

Hoh  Koenigsburg,  238 
Holland,  361 

its  policy  towards  Germany,  196 

238,  318 

Holland,  Professor,  361 
Holtenau,  240  note 
Honduras,  20  note 
Hotzendorf,  Baron  Konrad  von,  324 
Huerta,  General,  363  note 
Humanitarianism,  policy  of,  160,  166, 

168,  181,  182,  200-205,  232,  368 
Hungarian  Delegations,  the,  8 
labour,  228,  239  note 


Hungary,  68.     See  Austria 

Idealism,     226.     And     see     Humani- 
tarianism 
lie  de  France,  228 
Imperial  Conference,  the,  206,  215-219 

Preference,  212,  230,  313,  366 

Imperial  Russian  Gazette,  32 
Income  Tax  Bill,  French,  121 


INDEX 


383 


India,  172  note,  348,  354 

administration  of,  7,  76,  218,  219 

Emperor  of,  315 

Indian  labour,  228  note,  367 
Indies,  Spanish,  4 

Individualism,  113,  175,  268,  269,  275 
Indo-China,  348 

Inebali,  306  note 

Information,  L',  5  note,  69  note,  252 

note,  268  note 
Institute  of  Bankers,  262 
Insurance  Act,  the,  121  note 

companies  in  Italy,  359-361 

International  arbitration,  70  note,  174, 

193   note,    215,    218,    220,    350 
note,  362,  366,  368,  370  note 

character  of  history,  67 

finance,  3-5,  12.     See  Banking 

labour,  227-238 

law,  360-368 

mind,  the,  70 

political  economy,  9,  14 

Internationale,  227,  229,  264 
Iowa,  134 

Ipek,  335 
Ireland,  219  note 
Iron  and  Steel  Institute,  307 
Australian  need  of,  373 

German  need  of,  248-261 

Ironworks,  French,  311 
Islamism,  151,  241  note,  344,  346 
Istria,  335 

Isvolski,  M.,  325 
Italy,  6,  68,  290 

foreign  insurance  companies  in, 

359-362 

her  African  policy,  59  note,  61, 

66,  264,  287 

her  financial  system,  288 

her  relations  with  Austria,   52, 

77  note,  198,  244,  320-347 

her  relations  with  England,  56, 

341-347 

her  relations   with   France,    61, 

66,  106-109,  161,  244,  341-347 

—  her  relations  with  Germany,  52, 

56,  60,  320-347 

her  war  with  Turkey,  244,  300, 

327,  329,  332,  346 

—  nationalism    in,    11,    244,    264, 

287-289,  326 
Italian  labour,  228,  230,  236,  239  note 

Jacksonian  Democracy,  the,  141  note 

Jacobins,  the,  176  note,  312 

Jacquerie,  the,  80,  117,  119 

Jaffa,  306  note 

Jagow,  Gottlieb  von,  237,  344  note 

Jameson  Raid,  the,  56 

Japan,  economic  conditions  of,  272 

her  alliance  with  Russia,  8,  297, 

347-369 

her  policy  in  the  Pacific,  16,  347- 

369 

her  relations  with  England,  56, 

313,  347 

her  war  with  China,  56,  356 


Japan,  her  war  with  Russia,  74,  153, 

164,  168,  264  note 
Industrial  Bank  of,  268 

Mikado  of,  314 

Japanese  Bushido,  1 1 2 

labour,  20  note,  229  note,  231 

Jaures,  M.,  134,  175  note,  180 

on  the  alliance  with  Russia,  33 

note 

on  international  finance,  6  note, 

262,  264,  266  note 

Jebb,  Richard,  The  Britannic  Ques- 
tion, 218  note 

Jefferson,  22,  371 

Jenold,  Laurence,  The  Real  France, 
85  note,  143 

Jesuits,  the,  103 

Jibutil,  373 

Joan  of  Arc,  80 

Joly,  Henri,  229 

Jonnart,  M.,  305  note 

Journal  des  Dfbats,  74,  77  note 

de  Salonique,  152 

Jowett,  Mr.,  170 

Julius  Caesar,  4,  43 

Jura,  the,  195 

Jutland,  197  note 

Kabyle,  the,  228 

Kahn,  Maurice,  xii  note 

Karagcorgewitch,  Pierre,  154 

Katsura,  352 

Kent,  Men  of,  and  Kentish  Men,   76 

note 

Key  West,  372 
Kharbine,  355 
Kiderlen-Waechter,  Herr,  237,  278, 

345 

Kiel  Canal,  55,  72,  240,  251,  278  note 
Kingston,  Jamaica,  367 
Kipling,  Rudyard,  161,  214,  217,  331 

note 
Kirk-Kiliss6,    53,    78,    185   note,    321, 

333,  335,  336,  339,  345 
Kitchener,  Lord,  57 
Klotz,  M.,  268  note 
Knights  of  St.  John,  332 
Knox,  Mr.,  194 
Kokovtzof,  M.,  297 
Komagata  Maru,  228  note,  367  note 
Konopischt,  345 
Korea.    See  Corea 
Koweit,  171,  306  note 
Kruger,  President,  56,  241  note 
Krupps,  the,  260,  279,  307 

Labour  Party,  the,  277  note 
Labour    problems,  international.   12. 

227-238 

Ladysmith,  63,  65 
Lafayette,  137 
La  Fontaine,  270 

Laic,  definition  of  the  word,  92  note 
Lake  Mo  honk  Conference,  70 
Lamsnarch,  Professor,  361 
Lansdowne,  Marquess  of,   his  foreign 

policy,  9,  10,  63,  66,  253,  359 


384 


PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 


La  Reunion,  373 

Laurier,  Sir  Wilfrid,  212,  215-218 

Lavigerie,  Cardinal,  99 

Lavisse,  M.,  32,  188 

Lea,  General  Homer,  The  Day  of  the 

Saxon,  71  note,  347,  348,  371 

note 
League     of     French    Women,     the, 

106 

Lebon,  Dr.  Gustave,  110,  132  note 
Leipzig,  189  note 
Lemaitre,  Jules,  113 
Lenox,  U.S.A.,  24 
Leo  XIII,  Pope,  91,  93,  98-103,  106, 

288 

Leroy-Beaulieu,  A.,  119  note 
Levy,   Sam,   Les  Me f aits  du   Comite 

Union  et  Progres,  154 
Leyret,  Henry,  La  R6publigue  et  les 

Politiciens,  124  note 
Le    President    de   la  Republiyue, 

40  note 

Les       Tyrans     Ridicules,      125, 

141 

Liberal  Party,  the,  76 
LiberU,  63  note 
Libya,  288,  326 
Licamuet,    M.,    THistoire   de   VEglise 

sous   la    Troisieme   Rtpvblique, 

107  note 
Lichnowsky,   Prince,   278   note,   300, 

306 

Lille,  266  note 
Lindeqnlst,  Herr  von,  263 
Lisbon,  62 
Lodge,  Henry  Cabot,  350  note,  362, 

364,  366  note,  371  note 

One  Hundred  Years  of  Peace,  366 

note 

London,   16,  29,   149,   150,   165,  228, 
319,  353 

Communist     Union      Congress, 

227 

German  Embassy  in,  280,  299 

Guildhall,  176 

Port  of,  373 

Treaty  of,  110  note,  196,  332 

note 

Long  Island,  24 
Longwy,  233,  237 
Lorraine,  French,  7 

steel   works   of,    228,    234.     See 

also  Alsace 

Loubet,  M.,  106,  330  note 
Louis,  Paul,  273  note 
Louis  Philippe,  King,  137 
Louis  XIV.,  34,  72,  113,  143 
Louise,  Princess,  xi  note 
Low,  Sidney,  317  note 
Lubeck,  191 
Ludwigs-Canal,  290 
Lumm,  Herr  von,  251 
Lustiae  Blaetter,  189  note 
Luxembourg,  191,  233-238,  256 
Lyon-Caen,  Professor,  361 
Lyons,  18,  97,  129,  330  note 
1  Lysis,"  265,  266 


Macedonia,  58,  59  note,  149-155,  319, 
323  note,  327  note,  329,  335 

Macedonian  autonomy,  viii  note,  67 

Madagascar,  373 

Madrid,  29,  65 

Magdalena  Bay,  351 

Magnier,  175  note 

Magyars,  the,  328  note 

Mahan,  Rear-Admiral,  on  Panama, 
214-217,  356,  358,  362-366 

The  Interest  of  America  in  Inter- 

national Conditions,  15 
Mahomet  II.,  332 
Main,  the,  290 
Malay  States,  296  note 
Malmedy,  240  note 
Malta,  332 

Malthusian  theory,  233 
Manchester  University,  51  note,  206 

note 
Manchuria,   American     trade      with, 

357, 

Russian  interest  in,  56,  57,  194, 

347 

Manhattan  Island,  17,  23 
Manila,  57 

Mannesmanns,  the,  259,  260 
Manufacturers,  power  of  the,  3 
Marc  hand,  57 
Marches  de  I'Est,  Les,  188 
Marcus  Aurelius,  69,  70 
Marmara,  Sea  of,  58,  155 
Marseilles,  353,  373 
Martin,   William,   La   Crise  Politique 

de   I'AUemagne   Contemporainc, 

157  note,  224  note,  301  note 
Martinique,  373 
Marx,  Karl,  227 
Maurras,  Charles,  113,  134,  135,  168 

note 

L' Action  Franfaise,  140  note 

Kiel  et  Tangier,  62  note 

McClure's  Magazine,  146  note 
McMahon,  Marshal,  137 
Medic  Wars,  the,  6 
Mediterranean,  the,  10,  296,  303,  319- 

347 

Meiji,  352 

Meline,  M.,  102,  136 
Mercure  de  France,  273  note 
Mercy-Argenteau,  Countess  de,  179 
Meredith,  George,  166 
Mermeix,  249  note 
Merv,  354 

Messimy,  M.,  204  note,  284 
Metz,  56,  179,  189,  240 
Menrthe,  valley  of  the,  257-259,  311 
Meuse,  the,  233 
M6vil,  Andre,  De  la  Paix  de  Francfort, 

61  note 
Mexico,  193  note 

Gulf  of,  355 

immigration  problems  of,  351 

its   relations   with   the    U.S.A., 

363  and  note,  372 
Meyer,  Arthur,  182  note 
Michelet,  113,  118,  180 


INDEX 


386 


Middle  East,  the,  150,  166,  206,  283, 

297,   303,   305,    307   note,   319, 

329  note,  346 
Midhat  Pasha,  152 
Mikhailowsky,  poet,  xii  note 
Milan,  360  note 
Mill,  J.  8.,  72  note 
MUlerand,  M.,  110  note,  205  note,  275 

note 

Millevoye,  134 
Milner,  Lord,  The  Nation  and  Empire, 

317  note 
Mining  problems,  international,  3,  233- 

238,  256-261.  See  Coal  and  Iron 
Mississippi,  the,  19  note 
Mitsu-Hito,  351 
Mitylene,  332  note 
Mobile,  362  note 

Mohrenheim,  Baron  de,  53  note,  84 
Monaatir,  151 
Money,  power  of,  3,  109,  225,  226,  291. 

See  Banking  and  Finance 
Mongolia,  76,  349 
Monis,  M.,  117,  284 
Monroe  Doctrine,  the,  15,  16,  29,  215- 

217,   245,   246,    348,    356,   357, 

363  note,  368,  371  note 
Montenegro,  Constitution  of,  42 

fights  against  Turkey,  59,  264, 

325,  342 

its  relations  with  Rumania,  324 

note 

obtains  Antivari,  340 

Montesquieu,  273 
Montreal,  16,  215,  217 
Montreal  Star,  the,  214  note 
Mont-Saint  Martin,  233 
Morgan,  J.  Pierpont,  25  note,  286 
Morley,  Viscount,  51  note,  205 
Aforning  Post,  the,  161  note 
Morocco,  French  control  in,   29,   61, 

65  note,  66,  78,  109,  118,  149, 
163,  164,  168,  172  note,  188, 
194,  199,  241-243,  253,  256, 
258,263,281-285,295,  312,  316 
note,  346 

Morristown,  24 

Moselle,  the,  257-259,  311 

Moysset,  Henri,  244  note 

Muertzsteg,  Agreement  of,  149 

Mukden,  56,62,  310 

Munich,  189  note 

Munster,  Count,  62  note 

Munsterberg,  Professor,  26 

Muravieff,  Count,  56  note 

Muscat,  106,  172,  307  note 

Nancy,  264  note 
Nantes,  296  note 
Nanteuil,  Cte  de  la  Barre  de,  107 

note 
Napoleon  I,  69,  78,  113,  268,  271 

defeats  Austria,  335 

his  prophecies  falsified,  xi,  xii 

Napoleon  III,  his  dreams  of    reform, 

35,  175 

his  foreign  policy,  67-70,  72 


Napoleon  III,  his   regime,  43,  46,  90. 
120,  131,  141,  233 

on  the  Treaty  of  Frankfort,  179 

Natal,  228  note 

National  Review,  125  note 
Nationalism,  spirit  of,  11-13,  67,  159, 
231,  291,  324  note,  330 

American,  11,  356 

Austrian,  11,  263  note,  343 

French,ll,  80, 114, 147,  195,  312 

Italian,  11,  244,  326 

Rumanian,  11,  324  note 

South  American,  362,  363  note 


Necker,  34 

Neue  Freie  Presse,  275  note 

New  Caledonia,  373 

New  Guinea,  255 

New  Haven,  23 

New  Hebrides,  373 

New  Jersey,  21,  24 

Newman,  Cardinal,  70  note 

New  York,  16,  18,  24,  215.  223,  374 

New  York  Herald,  25  note 

New  Zealand,  374 

immigration    problems   in,    829 

note 

its  navy,  296  note,  367 

its  relations  to  England,  215,  350 

note 

its  trade  with  Germany,  373 

Neymarck,  Alfred,  5    note,  69    note, 

268  note 

Ngoko-Sangha,  283 
Nicaragua,  355, 

Americans  in,  370  note 

Canal,  192 

German  influence  in,  245 

Nicholas  H,  Tsar,  309 

appeals  for  disarmament,  31-36 

at  Const  an  tza,  324  note 

at  Racconigi,  325,  342 

his  interviews  with  William  II, 

55,  297,  298,  304  note 

in  France,  31,  36,  50 

Nicholson,  Sir  A.,  316  note 
Nicolaides,  Dr.  Kleanthes,  153  note 
Niel,  Marshal,  175  note 
Nietzsche,  147,  261 

Niger,  the,  279 

Nile,  the,  23,  119  note 

Nimegue,  Treaty  of,  38 

Nobel  Peace  Prize,  37,  40 

Xord  und  Sud,  239  note,  241 

Normandy,  236,  259,  260 

North  American  Indian,  the,  26 

North  American  Review,  369  note 

North  Carolina,  20  note 

North  Queensland,  255 

North  Sea,  the,  296,  303,  318,  319,  333 

North  Sunder  laud,  75 

Norway,  its  relation  to  the   Powers, 

318 

Novi-Bazar,  291 
Noyes,  Alexander  D.,  273  note 


Oceana,  312 
Ohio,  19  note 


CC 


386 


PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 


Oil  Company,  the  Anglo -Persian,  329, 

364  note 
Okhotsk,  353 
Ollivier,  Emile,  179 
Olympic  Games,  the,  24 
Open  Door,  principle  of  the,  16,  70, 

349,  357 

Opinion,  L',  170,  328  note 
Orleanist  Party,  the,  137,  138,  141 
Ottoman  Empire,  the,  xii 
Ouchy,  331  note 
Ouenza,  305 
Outlook,  The  (New  York),  19  note,  42, 

121  note,  192  note,  366  note 
Oxford  School  of  Geography,  19  note 

Pacelli,  Ernesto,  288 
Pacific,  the,  American  interest  in,  359, 
363-368 

English  possessions  in,  219 

French  possessions  in,  109 

German   and   Japanese   spheres 

of  influence  in,  16,  29,  350  note, 
351 

international   struggle   for,    350 

note,  356,  367,  372 
Pagny,  54 

Paleologue,  M.,  158  note 
Panama  Canal,  the,  opening  of,  353, 

355,  358 

problem  of  its  control,  10  note, 

41.  351,  362 

tends  to  make  America  a  World- 

Power,  14,  23,  214,    308,    350, 

358,  362-374 

Panama  Scandals,  the,  63,  85,  133,  192 
Pan-Americanism,  362 
Pan-Germanism,   52,   54-65,   78,  243- 

261,   263,   297,   300,   323  note, 

328  note,  334,  346 
Pan-Slavism,  xii,  57,  310,  346 
Panther,  the,  83,  201,  218,  284,  285, 

297 

Paradol,  Prevost,  125  note 
Parana,  245 
Pareto,  Vilfredo,  326 
Paris,  16-18,  29,  150,  177,  215,  319 

Bourse,  149,  187 

Comte  de,  137 

meridian  of,  170 

Signer  Tittoni  in,  325 

Sorbonne,  37,  39,  188 

strikes  in,  84,  129 

William  of  Prussia  in,  338 

Parliament  BUI,  the,  206-211 

Paschitch,  M.,  290,  291 

Patriotism  and  Science,   92  note,   98 

note,  134  note 
Patriotism,  national   and    world,  11, 

37,  112-114,  232 

Paty  de  Clam,  Lt.-Col.  du,  110  note 
Pauncefote,  371  note 
Pecci,  Cardinal,  100.     See  Leo  XIII 
Peel,    Hon.    George,    The    FiUure    of 

England,  12  note,  73  note 
Peel,  Sir  Robert,  73 
Pegruy,  Charles,  139,  140  note 


Peking  Expedition,  the,  356 
Pelissier,  M.,  180 
Pelletan,  175  note 
P£rier,  Ca  stair,  374  note 
Perrieres,  260  note 

Persia,  English  policy  in,  171,  172,  19J, 
254,  306  note,  347,  353 

German  interest  in,  150,  254 

Persian    Oil   Company,    Anfclo-,    329, 

364  note 

Perthes,  Justus,  170 
Peter  the  Hermit,  28 
Peterhof,  298 

Petrograd.     See  St.  Petersburg 
Philip  II,  72 
Philip  of  Macedon,  225 
Philippines,  the,  193  note,  357,  364 
Phillips,  Wendell,  246 
Pichon,  M.,  fall  of,  85,  171,  285  note 

his   Franco-German   Agreement. 

281-283,  285  note 
on  Belgian  neutrality.  171 


Picquart,  General,  205  note 

Pilant,  Paul,  Le  Palriotifme  en  France 

et  retramier,  33  note 
Pindar,  24 
Pinon,  Ren6,  France  et  Allemaync,  61 

note,  169  note 

La  lutte   pour  le  Pacifique,  225, 

220,  351  note.  356 

on  public  opinion,  264  note 

on  the  Banco  di  Roma,  288,  289 


Pius  IX,  91,  93,  98 
Pius  X,  106-109 
Plevna,  323 

Poinearc,  Raymond,  as  Premier,  136, 
282,  286  note 

his  policy  of  constructive  nation- 

alism, 134,  198  note,  267  note, 
296  note,  311,  331  note 

his  relations  with  Russia,   109, 

158,  298,  304  note,  327  note 

on  electoral  law,  125  note,  143 

visits  Holland,  316  note 

Poitou,  148 

Poland,  treatment  of,  68,   245  note, 

310,  337 

Polish  labour,  22S,  230 
Polynesia,  374 
Pontus,  the,  3 
Port  Arthur,  57,  74,  77 
Port- Baltic,  298-300 
Porto  Lfigos,  324  note 
Porto  Rico,  372 
Portsmouth,  29,  329 

Treaty  of,  349  note 


Portugal,  its  relations  with  England, 

62 

Portuguese  Colonies,  253,  254,  309 
Posadowsky,  Count,  247 
Postmen's  strike,  the  French,  80,  115. 

119,  126,  129,  132 
Potsdam,  159,  171,  172,  194,  201,  305 

Agreement,  1911,  307  note 

Prato,     Giuseppe,     11    Protezionismn 

Operaio,  230-232 
Protection,  policy  of,  230,  241  note,  246 


INDEX 


387 


Protestantism.  112-114 

Proudhon,  132 

Provence,  228 

Prussia,  birth-rate  of,  270  note 

feudal  character  of,  244 

its  relation  to  Poland,  310 

mines  in,  233 

Napoleon's  policy  for,  xi,  xii 

policy  of,  7,  32,  148,  189,  251 

seizes     Schleawig-Holstein,      71 

note 

Public  opinion,  power  of,  3,  6,  139,  225 
Puritanism,  25 

Quatrefages,  26 
Quebec,  217 
Quinet,  M.,  114,  180 

Racconigi,  321,  325,  342 
Race-suicide,  269-272 
Radziwill,  Prince,  xi  note,  63  note 
Radziwill,      Princess,    Quarante-Cinq 

Annies  de  Ma  Vie,  xi  note 
Railways,  strategic  value  of,  348,  349, 

353,  370  note,  371 
Rambaud,  93 
Rampolla,  Cardinal,  100 
Ratisbonne,  337 
Rawson,  Admiral,  62  note 
Reciprocity  between  Canada  and  the 

U.S.A.,  158,  181,  206,  212-221, 

365 

Reform,  Social,  226,  291 
Renaissance,  the,  18 
Renan,  Ernest,  L'Avenir  de  la  Science, 

112 

Rennes,  60  note 
Republicanism,  140 
Reutter,  Colonel  von,  190  note 
Revue  Bleue,  132  note 
Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  111,  119  note, 

264  note,  266  note,  288  note 
Rey,     Etienne,     La     Renaissance,    de 

I'Orgueil  Francois,  83,  271  note 
Rhine,  the,  119  note,  257 
Rhodes,  331,  332 
Rhone,  the,  18,  23,  24,  373 
Richelieu,  Cardinal,  69,  113,  286 
Richmond,  Mass.,  24 
Rio  Grande  do  Sul,  245 
Roberts,  Earl,  76,  166,  169 
Robespierre,  150  note 
Roche,  Jules,  44,  45,  98 
Roguin,  Professor,  361 
Rolln,  Professor  Alberio,  361 
Roman     Catholic     Church,     French 

diplomatic  relations  with,  85- 

109,  126,  312,  330  note 
Rome,  24,  119  note,  225,  258,  321 

Herr  von  Jagow  in,  237 

M.  Barrere  in,  61,  109 

M.  Loubet  in,  106,  330  note 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  as  President,  21, 

42,  45,  357,  358 

his  policy  in  San  Domingo  and 

Panama,  40,  41,  192,  362,  364, 
371  note 


Rooseveldt,  Theodore,  his  reform  pro- 
posals, 145  note 

in  Europe,  27-30,  36-40,  44,  47- 

50,  356 

on  arbitration,  29,  350  note 

Taft's  letter  to,  212,  214 

The  Ohio  Floods,  19  note 

The  Pioneer  Spirit  and  American 

Problems,  19  note 
Root,  Senator,  371  note 
Roseberry,  Lord,  73,  77  note 
Rostand,  Alexis,  268  note 
Roth,  Walter,  255 
Rotterdam,  197,  198,  237,  258 
Roubaix,  127 
Rouen,  90 

Rousseau,  J.  J.,  174 
Rouvier  Ministry,  the,  89,  330  note 
Rumania,  French  loans  to,  5  note,  266 

note 

its  independent  policy,  153  note, 

323  note,  324  note,  336 

its    relations    with   the    Balkan 

League,  xii  note,  110  note,  152, 
323  note,  336 

its  relations  with  Italy,  325  note 

its  relations  with  Turkey,  9,  10 

note 

Rumelia,  Eastern,  153 
Russell,  Lord  Odo,  299  note 
Russia,  her  Duma,  42,  115,  159,  297, 

309 
— • — •  her  financial  system,  69  note 

her  interest  in  the  Mediterranean 

and  the  Middle  East,  325-346 

her  naval  power,   74,   77   note, 

297,  332 

her  policy  in  the  Caribbean,  354- 

374 

her  policy  in  the  Par  East,  347- 

354 

her  relations  with  Austria,  53, 

54,  57,  59  note 

her  relations   with    France   and 

England.     See  under  England, 
France,  and  the  Triple  Entente 

her  relations  with  Germany,  13 

note,  52-65,  149,  172,  239  note, 
260,  295-298,  301  note 

her  relations  with  Japan,  8,  74, 

158,  164,  168,  297,  347-354 

her  relations  with  Turkey  and 

the  Balkans,  xii,  9.  10,  53,  158 
note,  310,  322 
Russian  Jews,  228 

Sadowa,  xii,  52  note,  336 

Saigon,  373 

Saint-Evremont,  25  note 

Saint-Severin,  119  note 

Salisbury,  Marquess  of,  foreign  policy 

of,  xii,  60-63,  84,  341,  345 
Salonica,  59  note,  151-153,  198,  290, 

325  note,  327  note,  334  note 
Samarkand,  354 
Samoa,  55,  253 
Sandjak,  291 


388 


PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 


San  Domingo,  40,  41 

San  Francisco,  229,  374 

Sangha,  283,  284 

San  Giuliano,  Marquis  de,  344  note 

San  Juan,  372 

San  Stefano,  Treaty  of,  156 

Santa  Catalina,  245 

Santiago,  372 

Saone,  the,  18 

Sarre,  the,  257 

Sarrebourg,  240 

Sarrou,  Major,  La  Jntne  Turquie  et  la 

Revolution,  151  note 
Saunders,  George,  259 
Savonarola,  39 
Savoy  Alps,  the,  195 
Savoy,  House  of,  332 
Sayous,  Andre,  252  note,  268  note 
Scandinavia,  260,  318 
Scandinavian  labour,  228 
Scheldt,  the,  11  note 
Scbemna,  General,  324 
Schiller,  xi 
Schleiermacher,  xi 
Schleswig-Holstein,  50,  71,  193  note, 

197  note 

Schlucht,  the,  189  note 
Schmitz,  Oskar  A.  H.,  Das  Land  der 

Wirklichkeit,  143  note 
Schnoebele  affair,  the,  54 
Schoen,  Baron  de,  285  note 
Schopenhauer,  51 
Scutari,  325  note 
Seattle,  16 
Secolo,  n,  360  note 
Sedan,  xii,  52,  68,  71,  175 
Seeley,  Colonel,  76 
Selves,  M.  de,  198,  284 
Serajevo,  327  note,  328  note 
Servetus,  150  note 
Servia,  xil  note 

attacks  Bulgaria,  323  note 

Austrian  ultimatum  to,  327  note, 

328  note 

— —  its  ambitions  in   the   Adriatic, 
263  note,  287 

its  finance  and  trade,  5  note,  266 

note,  290,  291 

its  relations  with   Turkey,    59, 

151-156,  264 

its   treaty   with    Bulgaria,    327 

note 

nationalism  in,  58,  232 

Shakespeare,  William,  203,  213: 
Sherman,  Mr.,  856 

Shevket  Pasha,  304 
ShJmonoseke,  Treaty  of,  56 
Shipwrights,  Worshipful  Company  of, 

Siberia,  353 

Sicily,  3 

Siegfried,  Jacques,  267  note 

Sighele,  Scipio,  326 

Silesea,  257 

Sllvella  Cabinet,  the,  65 

Simon,  Jules,  175  note 

Simplicitsimus,  189  note 


Sinaia,  323,  328  note 
Slavism,  xii,  156,  290,  333,  335,  346 
Smith,   Professor  J.   Allen,   Spirit  of 
American  Government,  145  note 
Smyrna,  150 
Social  unrest,  133  note 
Socialism  in  France,  311 
in  Germany,  44 


Sofia,  154,  155,  327  note 

Solidarity  v.  Individualism,  113,  175 

Solon,  3 

Soubise,  180 

Soumont,  260  note 

South  Africa,  66.     See  Boer  War 

Chinese  and  Indian  labour  in,  228 

note 

German  trade  with,  243 

its  relations  with  England,  215, 

296  note 

South  America,  its  relations  with  the 
U.S.A.,  16,  359,  362,  367,  374 

labour  problems  in,  228,  24 G 

Spain,  4 

foreign  policy  of,  63,  65,  66 

German  efforts  in,  163,  252 

Spanish-American  War,  the,   29,   57, 

74,  356,  364 
Spender,   J.   A.,   The  Foundations  of 

British  Policy,  77  note,  220  note, 

261  note 

Spinoza,  70,  71,  357,  363  note 
Sport  in  America,  22-25 
Spuller,  M.,  100,  136 
Stafford  House,  202  note 
Stamboul,  198 
Statist,  The,  quoted,  4  note 
Stavelot,  240  note 
Stead,  W.  T.,  183  note 
Steed,  Henry  Wickham,  The  Hapsburg 

Monarchy,    12,    310    note,    334 

note,  336  note 
Stein,  xi 

Stinnes,  Mathias,  260 
St.  Louis,  80 
Stockholm,  24,  319 
Stoffel,  Count,  175  note 
Stolypin,  M.,  159 
St.  Petersburg,  158  note,  319 
St.  Quentin,  187 
Strabo,  195 
Strasbourg,'   53,    56,    175  note,    177. 

179,  240 

Strikes,  276  note 
St.  Thomas,  Island  of,  372 
Suez  Canal,   23,    332,   354,   364,   371 

note,  373,  374 
Sure,  the,  237 
Swansea,  277  note 

Sweden,  its  relation  to  the  Powers,  318 
Swiss  capitalists  in  France,  5,  228 
Switzerland,  361 

neutrality  of,  191,  238 

Syndicalism,  114-168,  274,  275 
Syria,  109,  290,  306  note 

Taft,  President,  his  policy  in  the  Far 
East,  194,  348 


INDEX 


389 


Taft,  President,  proposes  Reciprocity, 
212,  214 

proposes    a    treaty    of    Arbitra- 

tion, 16,  174,  177,  180-182,  350 

note,  362,  370  note 
Tahiti,  373 

Taillandier,  George  Saint-Rene,  122 
Taine,  119,  122,  124 
Taisho,  352 
Talleyrand,  53 

Tangiers,  60,  78,  168,  236,  242,  256 
Tardieu,  Andre,  in  Berlin,  78 

Le  Mystere  d'Ayadir,  260  note, 

285  note 

on  the  Entente,  157,  172 

Tariff  reform,  230,  313 
Tashkent,  354 

Tasmania,  317  note 

Tara,  242  note 

Tchataldja,  331  note 

Teheran,  353 

Temps,  Le,  37,  141  note,  158, 163,  172, 

242   note,   285  note,   326,    360 

note 

Territorial  Force,  the,  76 
Testament  Politiqtte,  Le,  286 
Thiebaud,    Georges,    Lea    Secrets    du 

Regne,  137 

Thiers,  Adolf,  69  note,  299  note 
Thomas  process,  the,  257 
Thomasson,  M.  de,  77  note 
Thrace,  58 

Thyssen,  Herr,  236,  259,  260 
Tilsitt,  Treaty  of,  xi,  xii 
Times,  The,  12,  79,  121  note,  147  note, 

155  note,  291 

Abbot  Gasquet's  letter  to,  105 

Frederic  Harrison's  letter  to,  202 

note 

M.  de  Blowltz,  correspondent  of, 

52  note.  61  note,  341 

Mr.  Goodfellow's  article  in,  255 

on    the    Anglo-German    Agree- 

ment, 253 

on  English  defence,  78  note,  170 

on  Flushing,  171 

on    German   commercial  enter- 

prise. 260  note,  278  note 
on    German    policy    in    Alsace- 
Lorraine,  177 

on  The  Hague  Conference,  183 

note 

on  the  Moroccan  question,  65, 

168,  259 

on  our  Persian  policy,  329,  354, 

364  note 

on  Roosevelt,  28 

on  the  U.S.A.,  20  note 

Tirpitz.    Admiral  von,   76    note,  345 

note 

Tittoni,  Signer,  288,  325  * 
Tokyo,  352,  355 
Tongking,  53 
Trade,  Balkan,  339  note 

international,  10,  20  note,  238- 

261,  309 
Trans-Iranian  projects,  287,  354,  355 


Transvaal,  228  note 

War,  the,  63 

Transylvania,  12  note 

Treaty,  value  of  a,  191 

Trent,  326 

Treves,  240  note 

Trieste,  326,  334  note 

Triple  Alliance,  the,  7,  31,  77  note, 

103,  106,  158  note,  306  note 
formation  of,   52,   67,  161.  163, 

200, 206 
its  action  in  the  Mediterranean, 

319-346 
Triple  Entente,  the,  7,  77  note,  78, 109, 

285  note,  298-309 
Germany's  failure  to  wreck,  198- 

223,  282,  295-301 
its  formation,  30,  67,  162-174 
its  policy  in  the  Caribbean,  354 

374 
its  policy  in  the  Far  East,  287, 

347-354 
its  policy  in  the  North  Sea  and 

the  Mediterranean,  319-347 
the  relations  between  its  mem- 
bers before  Agadir,  148-198 
Tripoli,  Italian  seizure  of,  59  note,  61, 
66,  264,  287,  320,  325,  326,  341, 
345  note 
Tripoli  (Syria),  306  note 
Trusts,  international,  3 
Tsushima,  297,  310 
Tunis,  52,  53,  161,  242  note,  345  note, 

346 

Turenne,  Marshal,  180 
Turkestan,  354 

Turkey,  Balkan  wars  against,  59,  110 
note,  232  note,  264,  300,    306 
note,  322-342.     -Sec  also   under 
Balkan 
closes  the  Dardanelles,  9,  10,  359 


Constitution  of,  42 

decay  of,  63,  346,  349  note 


enters  Constantinople,  333 

European  State  loans  to,  4 

Italian  war  against,    244,   288, 

300,  327-333,  342,  346 

its   agreements   with    England, 

France,  Germany,  and  Russia, 
1913-14,  306  note 

its  naval  power,  332  note 

its  relations  with  Austria,   32 T 

note,  339  note 

its  relations  with  Germany,  149, 

306  note 

its  relations  with  Russia,  rii,  58, 

306  note,  322,  325,  329 

nationalism  in,  11 

Young  Turks  movement,  150-1 56, 

307  note,  327  note 
Tyrol,  the,  324 

Ubangui,  284 

Ulster,  219  note 

United  States.     See  America 

Universal  Suffrage,  140,  143 

Uskub,  59  note,  291,  335 


390 


PROBLEMS  OF  POWER 


Valenciennes,  11  note 

Valona,  198,  325,  342 

Vancouver,  296  note,  374 

Vandal,  Albert,  34  note 

Varna,  290 

Vatican,    the.     See    Roman    Catholic 

Clmrch 
Vaugelas,  112 
Velzer  family,  the,  246 
Venezelos,  M.,  155  note 
Venezuela,  66,  246,  355,  363  note 
Venice,  325  note,  335 
Vercingetorix,  80 
Versailles,  Bismarck  at,  xii,  31  note, 

136,  163 

Nicholas  II  at,  31 

trial  of  Zola  at,  111 

Vianden,  238 

Victor  Emanuel  II  at  Racconigi,  325, 
342 

imperial  policy  of,  244 

M.  Loubet  visits,  106 

Victoria  (B.C.),  228  note 

Victoria,  Queen,  62,  64,  72,  213,  315 

Vienna,  53,  325  note,  343 

Treaty  of,  196,  237 

Viollet,    Paul,    Les    Communes   Fran- 
coises au  Moyen  Age,  87 
Virgil,  50 
Vitry,  36 
Viviani,  204  note 
Vladivostok,  374 
Volga,  the,  354 
Vorarlberg,  324 
Vosges,  the,  91,  188,  195,  288 
Vrooman,  Frank  Bufflngton,  19  note 

Waldeck-Rousseau,  M.,   89,    103-105, 

127,  130 

Wales,  coronation  of  Prince  of,  315 
Walflsch  Bay,  308 
Wallon  amendment,  the,  46  note 
War,  37,  260 
Ward,  Wilfred,  100 
Washington,  16, 19  note,  134, 177,  286, 

363  note,  364,  366,  369 
Waterloo,  Battle  of,  1815,  xi,  72 


Webster-Ashburton  Treaty,  the,  366 

Week-end  habit,  the,  315  and  note 

Westphalia,  257,  260 

West  Point,  23 

Whitman,  Walt,  221 

Wile,  F.  W.(  259 

Wilhelmshaven,  240  note 

William  I,  Emperor,  31  note,  179,  338 

William  II,  Kaiser,  at  Essen,  279 

at  Kiel,  251 

at  Tangier,  168  note,  256 

his    endeavours    to    break    the 

Triple  Entente,  29,  65,  78,  160 

his  Pan-Germanic  policy,  52,  54- 

.    65,  78,  203,  261 

his  policy  towards  Austria  and 

Italy,   200,   325,   343,   345  and 
note 

his  policy  towards  Poland,  310 

note 

his  relations  with  Russia,  32,  297, 

298 
his  telegram  to  Kmger,  56 

in  Alsace,  177 

Wilson,  Dr.  Woodrow,  21 

his  Panama  policy,  362  note,  370 

note 

his  policy  towards  Mexico,   363 

note 

The  State,   110  note,   137   note, 

144  note 

Wireless  telegraphy,  373 
WiUeJsbach,  250 

Woman's  Home  Companion,  370  note 
Woolwich  Arsenal,  277  note 

Yamamoto,  Mr.,  352 
Yellow  Peril,  the,  37,  351 

Sea,  the,  353 

Young  Turks,  the,  150-156,  307  note, 

327  note 
Yucatan,  363  note 

Zanzibar,  253,  254 
Zeppelin  fleet,  the,  319 
Zislin,  M.,  189 
Zola,  Emile,  60  note,  111 


THE   END 


BILLING    AND  SONS,    LTD.,    PRINTERS,    OUILDFOHD 


ERRATA. 

Page  77,  last  line,  for  "  (p.  64)"  read  "  (p.  73)." 

Page  120,  line  7  from  bottom,  for  "chose"  read  "choose." 

Page  132,  line  3  from  bottom,  for  "  Federal  Confederation  of  Labour"  read 

"  General  Confederation  of  Labour." 

Page  169,  line  3  from  bottom,/or  "election"  read  "elections." 
Page  174,  note  1  should  be  erased. 

Page  190,  line  13  from  bottom,  delete  comma  after  the  word  "doit" 
Page  204,  Hue  2  from  bottom,  for  "  ou  "  read  "  vu." 
Page  204,  last  line,  for  "  depenses  "  read  "  depenses." 
Page  231,  line  14,  insert  before  "  psychology"  the  word  "the." 


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